Martin Eden, Jack London
Martin Eden, Jack London
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Martin Eden

Author: Jack London

Narrator: Edoardo Ballerini

Unabridged: 14 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/30/2021

Categories: Fiction

Synopsis

Martin Eden is living in California at the beginning of the 1900s where he struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, hoping to achieve a place among the literary elite. His principal motivation is his love for Ruth Morse, a member of a bourgeois family. But as Eden is a rough, uneducated sailor from a working-class background, a marriage between them would be impossible, unless he reached their level of wealth and status.Eden promises Ruth that success will come. Although an impoverished seaman, he obsessively and aggressively pursues dreams of education and literary fame. But Ruth loses her patience and rejects him in a letter.By the time Eden gains success with publishers and the bourgeoisie who had shunned him, he has developed a grudge against them and become jaded by toil and unrequited love. His success fails to satisfy him, and he comes to believe that people did not value him for himself or for his work but only for his fame.Martin Eden is considered a semiautobiographical novel in which Jack London expressed his critique of individualism.

About Jack London

Jack London (1876–1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. Before making a living at his writing, he spent time as an oyster pirate, a sailor, a cannery worker, a gold miner, and a journalist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction writing. He is best known for his novels The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set during the Klondike gold rush, as well as the short stories “To Build a Fire,” “An Odyssey of the North,” and “Love of Life.”  He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as “The Pearls of Parlay” and “The Heathen.” He was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers and wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics, including The Iron Heel, The People of the Abyss, and The War of the Classes.

About Edoardo Ballerini

Edoardo Ballerini is a two-time winner of the Audio Publisher Association’s Best Male Narrator Award, a two-time winner of Society of Voice Arts Awards, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Chris on September 24, 2009

This is one of the best books I've ever read. A remarkable attempt by Jack London in dissecting a person's evolution of being as they happen upon the path of enlightenment. Martin Edin (M.E.--a hint at the author's identification with the hero?) is a roughneck sailor who is blinded and transformed b......more

Goodreads review by Candi on April 13, 2024

This book! My last two reading adventures have left me reeling. The one before this, Waterland, put me in a dream-like trance. This one won’t allow me to let go of its eponymous hero. Martin Eden pops up in my head at random times throughout the day. Perhaps random isn’t the right word, because as I......more

Goodreads review by Simona on March 05, 2022

"Of course it was beautiful; but there was something more than beauty in it, something more stingingly splendid which had made beauty its handmaiden." It is astounding how long it took for me to digest this book -and I say this in nothing but praise. Honestly, it's not like I'm sure the process is co......more

Goodreads review by Lena on September 09, 2021

It is a classical philosophical tragedy: unrecognized genius vs bourgeois society, but the main character is unsympathetical. Although his assumptions about society is hard to deny, his attitude toward other people is pretentious and extremely rude. He values his own principals more than anything el......more

Goodreads review by Valeriu on May 10, 2023

E greu de înțeles cum un om poate ieși din ignoranță și servitute, muncind cîte 19 ore pe zi (citește și scrie), dar nu poate trece de primul eșec sentimental (sesizează că Ruth Morse, femeia de care s-a îndrăgostit, nu este chiar o zeiță, o întrupare a Perfecțiunii) și decide, subit, să se sinucidă......more

Quotes

“When you blend a master of lyrical language with an outstanding narrator, the result is an unforgettable listening experience…Edoardo Ballerini’s tenor is just right for Martin’s sensitive, poetic observations and artful descriptions. He ensures that London’s reality is our reality, making this classic a choice listening experience. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile

“One of the best one hundred books of the twentieth century.” Le Monde

“Martin Eden is assuredly one of Jack London’s greatest works.” Upton Sinclair, Pulitizer Prize–winning American author

Awards

  • AudioFile Earphones Award
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