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In Before Adam, an unnamed narrator describes the life of one of his ancestors, who lived during the transition from ape to human being.
Written and published in the early 20th Century, the novel presents ideas that were common for the period, like scientific racism and racial memory, and has elements of eugenic thought. This makes the work outdated both scientifically and socially.
Today, the novel is obscured by Jack London’s more successful works, like Call of the Wild and Martin Eden.
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Previews available in: Finnish English Dutch Hebrew Swedish
Subjects
Fiction, Prehistoric peoples, Dreams, Evolution, Bibliography, Animals, Classic Literature, Romans, Animaux, Évolution, American fiction (fictional works by one author), Fiction, fantasy, general, Fiction, science fiction, general, Collected works (single author, multi-form)People
Jack London (1876-1916)Showing 11 featured editions. View all 192 editions?
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Work Description
A young man in modern America is terrorized by visions of an earlier, primitive life. Across the enormous chasm of thousands of centuries, his consciousness has become entwined with that of Big-Tooth, an ancestor living at the dawn of humanity. Big-Tooth makes his home in Pleistocene Africa, a ferocious, fascinating younger world torn by incessant conflict between early humans and protohumans. Before Adam is a remarkable and provocative tale that thrust evolution further into the public spotlight in the early twentieth century and has since become a milestone of speculative fiction. The brilliance of the book lies not only in its telling but also in its imaginative projection of a mindset for early humans. Capitalizing on his recognized ability to understand animals, Jack London paints an arresting and dark portrait of how our distant ancestors thought about themselves and their world.
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- Created June 10, 2024
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| January 13, 2026 | Edited by David Scotson | |
| June 10, 2024 | Created by ImportBot | import new book |











