In the Library
To Build a Fire
Jack London, 1908
- Form
- Form Short Story
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Accessible
- Reading time
- Reading time 30 minutes
- Chapters
- Chapters 1
- Length
- Length 7k words
£1.99
Read in the app, yours for good. Not yet by post.
The book unlocks on your account as soon as you buy it, so the 14-day right to cancel ends once it is unlocked.
Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail
What buying means
- Yours for good, on every iPhone you sign in to.
- Read in the app’s own reader, with the original beside the translation where there is one.
- Downloaded, so it reads with no signal.
- The same price as in the app. Folio already opens every book on this shelf; buying keeps this one after Folio ends. A refund takes it back.
If you like this, try
The Call of the Wild
Jack London
London does the same thing in the same frozen North, but tells it through the dog, who learns the law of the cold and survives it.
£1.99
White Fang
Jack London
_White Fang_ does the same thing with the Yukon's indifference, but runs the story the other way, from wolf to fireside.
£1.99
About the book
Spit crackles in the air before it reaches the snow, and that is how the man knows it is colder than fifty below. It is seventy-five, on a grey Yukon morning with no sun, and he is walking alone toward the boys at a camp on Henderson Creek, a wolf-dog trotting at his heels. The old-timer at Sulphur Creek warned him that nobody should travel alone in cold like this. He is quick and alert, but he lacks imagination, and London builds the whole story on that one flaw: a mind that registers the numbers and never feels what they mean. The dog feels it. Its instinct knows more than his judgement, and the plain, patient sentences keep pace with every step, the ice thickening on his beard, the hidden springs waiting under the snow. Then everything narrows to a fire, a handful of matches and fingers that will no longer obey, and the suspense of striking each one is almost too much to bear. Read it somewhere warm, and your own hands will still begin to ache.