Lost Face

Lost Face is a short story collection published in 1910 by the American writer Jack London, containing seven works set mostly in the snowfields of the Klondike and along the Yukon River—literary terrain shaped by the author's own gold-prospecting experience in 1898. The title story, 'Lost Face,' concerns a European adventurer captured by Indians who, to evade torture before death, cleverly induces the chief to end his life with an axe, preserving the last shred of his dignity; 'To Build a Fire,' written in an almost pitiless style, traces how a single mistake in building a fire in extreme cold dozens of degrees below zero leads step by step toward death, and is regarded as one of Jack London's most celebrated short stories; 'Trust,' 'The Passing of Marcus O'Brien,' 'Flush of Gold,' 'The Wit of Porportuk,' and 'That Spot' portray, from angles of cunning, the absurd, love, and the ethics of exchange, the resilience, greed, and self-mockery of human nature on savage land. The collection's style is spare and forceful, its language close to the colloquial, yet within very short compass it builds intense dramatic tension; it is a representative collection for understanding Jack London's 'Northland stories.' This edition is a Chinese e-book translation by Liu Fengyu and Wang Binghui, with a translator's preface and notes.