The Game

Joe Fleming is twenty years old, engaged to be married, and the best young boxer in his neighborhood — and on the night before his wedding, he steps into the ring one more time. Jack London's The Game is a taut, visceral novella about the pull of physical glory against the pull of ordinary happiness, told through the eyes of the fiancée who sneaks in to watch the fight she was never supposed to see. Round by round, London captures the brutal poetry of the boxing ring with the same raw intensity he brought to the frozen Yukon — and builds to an ending that still lands like a gut punch. Drawn from London's own passion for the sport, The Game remains one of the earliest and finest boxing novellas in American fiction. A tense, fast-moving boxing novella from a master of physical adventure A love story shadowed by the risk of the ring One of the first serious literary treatments of prizefighting The bell is about to ring — there's no walking away now.