The sumptuously imagined novel of Jack London

Romana Petri seized one of the most fascinating challenges that an author could undertake: writing the fury of living of a man who was a boxer, a seal hunter, an insurance agent, a gold prospector; a man who loved the blue shade of the forest and the dazzling radiance of the sea, who looked at the soul of populations fighting and at the heart of women. And women are the true engine of the story: the petty-bourgeois fragrance of Mabel, the concreteness of Bessie, the intellectual charm of Anna Strunsky, the determination of Charmain (“to be many women in one”), the irreplaceability of his sister Eliza.

Then again, what Romana Petri wrote is not a biography. Figlio del lupo (lit. “The Wolf’s Son”) is a novel based on a true story. It’s the story of the characters whom we loved; the story of a man suspended between the great narrator and the socialist who wants to talk like a revolutionary to seven million workers, but who also can’t resist having his shoe laces tied for him because he has no time to lose; the story of a man suspended between the game of love promised, experienced, betrayed, always at high temperatures, and the torment of an impending failure.