The call of the wild

Synopsis

The Call of the Wild is a short novel by Jack London, first serialized in The Saturday Evening Post and published as a book in 1903. Its hero is Buck, a large and powerful dog who lives in a home in California's Santa Clara Valley until he is stolen and sold. During the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890s, when strong sled dogs were in great demand, he is taken to the Yukon and forced to haul sleds through the frozen North, where he must learn to survive. London drew on the year he had spent in the Yukon himself. Survival, the return to the primitive and nature against nurture run through a book that was enormously popular from the moment it was published and has never been out of print.