The Scarlet Plague

About this book

An old man tells a group of wild, impatient boys about the world that existed before the plague. He remembers universities, crowded cities and the ease of modern life. The children know only the ruins and cannot quite believe that people once lived as he describes.

Jack London sets his story decades after a devastating epidemic has destroyed organised society. The former professor's account moves between the terror of the outbreak and the strange society growing from its aftermath. Gordon Grant's illustrations accompany this vision of collapsed civilisation. The cruelest detail is how quickly knowledge disappears when nobody remains to teach it.