The Jacket (The Star-Rover)

A condemned prisoner, tortured in solitary confinement by being laced into a straitjacket, learns to escape his agony by projecting his mind across time and space, reliving vivid past lives as a frontiersman, a castaway, a Roman, and more. London frames a brutal critique of the prison system within a bold fantasy of reincarnation and the indestructible spirit. Strange, ambitious, and moving, The Star Rover blends social protest with visionary adventure across the centuries. A late and unusual work, it showcases London’s imaginative daring and his belief in the endurance of the human soul against the cruelty of the body’s prison.