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Koolau the Leper

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John Griffith Chaney, later Jack London, was born into a turbulent bohemian world in San Francisco, the child of Flora Wellman and, she believed, her common-law husband, William Henry Chaney, an itinerant astrologer who deserted her. Flora married John London on 7 September in 1876. Jack heard from a family member at age twenty-one that John was not his father. Perhaps in part because of the psychological dualities of his childhood, London frequently attempted to conjoin opposites in his work, such as socialism and individualism, wanderlust and love of home, travel overseas and California ranching, Friedrich Nietzsche versus Karl Marx or Charles Darwin, racism versus brotherhood. He wrote fifty books on extremely diverse subjects, including 198 short stories. London's "strength of utterance" is at its height in his stories, and they are painstakingly well-constructed. Koolau the Leper was first published in 1909. Koolau is the leader of a group of natives on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, all severely stricken with leprosy, who have gathered in an impregnable mountain fortress to resist internment by the authorities on the prison-island of Molokai from which there is no return. This is the story of their struggle to remain free, heightened in intensity from start to finish by the fiery anti-missionary and anti-governmental diatribes of their determined but doomed leader. Were race relations really that bad in the bad old days of the early 20th Century in Hawaii? You can listen online to free English audiobook “Koolau the Leper” by Jack London on our website.