The people of the Abyss

On October 16, 1916 — one month and six days before his death — Jack London wrote to an admirer curious to know his favorite books: "I believe I put my heart into The People of the Abyss more than into any other of my books." First published in 1903 in New York, The People of the Abyss describes with relentless sensibility the urban catacombs of London at the beginning of the 20th century — a dazzling journey into the inverse of civilization and progress, in which the author invests his own body by wandering disguised as a vagabond through the city's most deprived areas. The impressions Jack London derives from this, reported in this incomparable work, expose the deceptions of modernity, which more than a hundred years later continues to push "unfit and useless" into the depths and legitimize barbarity through democratic vote.