"How Conrad’s imperial horror story Heart of Darkness resonates with our globalised times." — The conversation
Heart of Darkness is a short novel by Polish novelist
Joseph Conrad, written as a frame narrative, about
Charles Marlow's experience as an ivory transporter down the
Congo River in
Central Africa. The river is "a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land".
In the course of his travel in
central Africa, Marlow becomes obsessed with
Mr. Kurtz. The story is a complex exploration of the attitudes people hold on what constitutes a barbarian versus a civilized societyand the attitudes on
colonialism and
racism that were part and parcel of
European imperialism. Originally published as a three-part serial story, in Blackwood's Magazine, the novella
Heart of Darkness has been variously published and translated into many languages. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked
Heart of Darkness as the sixty-seventh of the hundred
best novels in English of the
twentieth century.
About the Author
Joseph Conrad 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature.
Conrad wrote
stories and
novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of what he saw as an impassive, inscrutable universe.
Conrad is considered an early modernist, though his works contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in
Lord Jim, for example, have influenced numerous authors, and many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, his works. Numerous writers and critics have commented that
Conrad's fictional works, written largely in the first two decades of the
20th century, seem to have anticipated later world events.
"The book was Zeitgeist-y enough to provide the epigraph for his epoch-defining poem." — T.S. Eliot
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born British novelist, who became a British subject in 1886. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and then always with a marked Polish accent). He wrote stories and novels, predominantly with a nautical or seaboard setting, that depict trials of the human spirit by the demands of duty and honor. Conrad was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature. While some of his works have a strain of romanticism, he is viewed as a precursor of modernist literature; his narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many subsequent authors. Films have been adapted from or inspired by Conrad's Victory, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, An Outcast of the Islands, The Duel, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo. Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew upon his experiences in the French and later the British Merchant Navy to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a worldwide empire while also plumbing the depths of the human soul. (wikipedia)
