Jack London

25 septembre 2017

Born in 1876, one hundred years after the US Declaration of Independence, Jack London (real name John Griffith Chaney) became the adventure writer who, at the turn of the 20th century, drew inspiration from his experiences to write over fifty books in just 25 years. A prolific writer who was both socially and politically committed, Jack London, author of White Fang and The Call of the Wild, also wrote about those people in society failed by capitalism. After a life lived to the extremes, he died on November 22, 1916 at the age of 40.

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  • The Iron Heel

    Jack London - Livre - Penguin Classics - 1908
    At the tender age of fourteen, Jack London wrote about the lives of those workers, exploited six days a week, fifteen hours a day, for wages that were barely enough to survive on. This daily struggle and the books he consumed at the library (Mark Twain, Karl Marx, Darwin, Tolstoy, Hugo, Zola) helped Jack London to realise the importance of trade unions and socialist ideas. In The Iron Heel, a romantic and political novel, Jack London imagines a tyrannical regime, a blend of capitalism and fascism, to be the ruling class in America. This novel was praised by Leon Trotsky himself in a letter addressed to Jack London’s daughter.
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    The Horsemen

    Joseph Kessel - Livre - New American Library - 1967
    Of all the travel writers Joseph Kessel, born in Argentina to a Lithuanian father and a Russian mother, is certainly the one who travelled the most under different national identities. An insatiable writer, he made numerous trips across different continents to bring back stories that he then published in many forms. The Horsemen - whose action takes place in Afghanistan at a time when this country was synonymous with wide-open spaces and shrouded in mystery - is an inspiring epic novel and an ode to freedom.
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    Planus

    Blaise Cendrars - Livre - 1948
    Born in Switzerland, Blaise Cendrars left for Russia at the age of sixteen. He started out as a poet whose work included The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and Easter in New York. In Planus, Cendrars organises his recollections by port, including Venice, Naples, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Brest and Paris. Eleven harbours which enable him to tell eleven different stories, full of improbable characters, but also to speak of literature "to sing about the departure and openness of others ".
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    Reds

    Warren Beatty - Video - 1981
    John Reed is an American journalist and communist, who at the turn of the 1910’s took an interest in the Mexican revolution before heading off to Russia and taking part in the October Revolution of 1917. His most famous book Ten Days Which Shook the World is an outstanding first-hand account of the insurrection which, in Petrograd (subsequently Leningrad and now St. Petersburg) caused the fall of the Tsar and the end of the imperialist regime. John Reed died in 1920 from typhus. He is buried beneath the wall of the Kremlin. Warren Beatty, Hollywood’s prodigal son (Bonnie and Clyde), directed Reds  - a long biopic which features Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson.
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    Stories from the Rwandan Marshlands

    Jean Hatzfeld - Livre - Picador - 2001
    Jean Hatzfeld joined Liberation newspaper in 1975 and travelled to Rwanda after the massacres that took place there in 1994. He would go on to make many more visits to Rwanda over the next ten years, notably to Nyamata in the marshland regions. Stories from the Rwandan Marshlands brings together accounts from the three books he devoted to this subject: Life Laid Bare (France Culture Prize 2001), Machete Season (Femina Non-Fiction Prize and Joseph Kessel Prize 2004) and The Antelope’s Strategy (Medicis Prize 2007).  A compilation of eyewitness stories and candid accounts. Heart-wrenching.
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    How Yukong Moved The Mountains

    Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan - Video - 1971-1976
    In 1898, Joris Ivens was quite literally born with a camera in his hand as his father ran a company selling film photography equipment. From the 1930’s onwards, having already directed several experimental short films, he went on to film the struggles of workers and people for their independence. How Yukong Moved The Mountains is a series of 12 films about China in the 1970’s during the last days of the Cultural Revolution. An important documentary (Duration : 11 hours).
  • Corto Maltese - Under the Midnight Sun

    Pratt, Canales, Pellejero - Livre - Casterman - 2015
    In 1915, Corto Maltese headed to San Francisco where he hoped to find his long-time friend, the writer Jack London. But the author of The Call of the Wild had already set sail for Mexico, to discover more about Pancho Villa’s revolution. Yet he left behind a message for Corto, asking him to hand over a letter to a certain Waka Yamada, a former saloon star turned militant opposing the White Slave Trade in Alaska. When it comes to adventure, improbable encounters and lost causes, Corto shares many attributes with Jack London. It is as though Corto is Jack London’s double.
  • The Dispossessed

    Robert McLiam Wilson, Donovan Wylie - Livre - Picador - 1992
    When reading The Dispossessed, one is immediately reminded of Jack London, who, in 1902, walked the squalid streets of London and spent six months in the East End. This experience inspired Jack London to write People of the Abyss. In The Dispossessed Robert McLiam Wilson and photographer Donovan Wylie describe with great attention to detail and empathy the poverty, lack of hope, and absolute desperation of those left behind by Thatcher’s government policies in the cities of London, Glasgow and Belfast.
  • Four Hands

    Paco Ignacio Taibo II - Livre - 1995
    Stan Laurel, Houdini, Pancho Villa, Leon Trotsky, two journalists who dream of writing a great novel, the director of the CIA, a cocaine trafficker, a Sandinista commander in danger, an old Bulgarian revolutionary, a Spanish anarchist, a Hollywood actor enlisted in the International Brigades, the shadow of Joseph Stalin ... With the disparate pieces of this improbable puzzle, Paco Ignacio Taibo II describes the history of revolutions since the beginning of the century and draws a vivid portrait of those characters behind each revolution not to mention those who were betrayed by them.

The Iron Heel
Jack London

The Horsemen
Joseph Kessel

Planus
Blaise Cendrars

Reds
Warren Beatty

Stories from the Rwandan Marshlands
Jean Hatzfeld

How Yukong Moved The Mountains
Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan

Corto Maltese - Under the Midnight Sun
Pratt, Canales, Pellejero

The Dispossessed
Robert McLiam Wilson, Donovan Wylie

Four Hands
Paco Ignacio Taibo II

Dans cette sélection

  • Jack London | The Iron Heel
  • Joseph Kessel | The Horsemen
  • Blaise Cendrars | Planus
  • Warren Beatty | Reds
  • Jean Hatzfeld | Stories from the Rwandan Marshlands
  • Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan | How Yukong Moved The Mountains
  • Pratt, Canales, Pellejero | Corto Maltese – Under the Midnight Sun
  • Robert McLiam Wilson, Donovan Wylie | The Dispossessed
  • Paco Ignacio Taibo II | Four Hands

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