Jack London 
The iron heel 

Published in 1907, this novel by Jack London represents an example of ‘realist science fiction’: impeccable and prophetic in its social and political analysis but, at the same time, unrestrained in its invention of a dystopian yet sinisterly familiar reality. A text on the fates of capitalist society, ‘The Iron Heel’ is one of the most hallucinatory and veridical frescoes of profit-dominated society, painted in its generalized oppression and its implicit and inevitable outlets for violence and slaughter. The lucid and fearless prophet of this story is Ernest Everhard, the freedom fighter (a memorable character to whom Ernesto Che Guevara owes his first name). The narrative of his life and thought is entrusted to the diary of his beloved Avis, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy bourgeois family who opens her eyes, through her love for Ernest, to the intolerable oppression enacted by the social class to which she belongs. A fierce, visionary masterpiece.

Complete edition with interactive table of contents.