Variety
New York: Minton Balch & Co., 1939. First Edition. 8vo, pp. 322. Black cloth, blocked and titled in yellow. Preceding the London edition of the same year. Without the scarce dust jacket. Near fine. Item #1375
A collection of 13 short stories, each of a different type (business, sex, comic, sentiment, war, and so on) the most famous of which is "The Most Dangerous Game," a story whose premise has proved to be one of the most generative in popular culture. General Zaroff, a Russian aristocrat fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution, recreates on his private island the exact power relations that sparked the uprising he fled, his careful cataloging of victims by race and class exposing how aristocratic privilege and colonial logic operate through the same mechanisms of categorization and dehumanization. The first film adaptation appeared in 1932, directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack and filmed simultaneously with King Kong on the same jungle sets; the adaptations that followed extend from Predator to Battle Royale to The Hunger Games, making this quietly one of the most influential short stories of the twentieth century. You should read this because beneath its surface as an adventure tale, "The Most Dangerous Game" is a precise indictment of aristocratic violence and colonial dominion, and the fact that it has never stopped being retold is a clear signal we have not yet dismantled the system it describes.
Price: $300.00