Heart of Darkness (Deluxe Library Binding)

When Charles Marlow accepts the captaincy of a steamship in the Congo, he witnesses the brutality with which the colonialists treat the African people. Setting off with a crew of cannibals, Marlow is tasked with transporting ivory downriver and rescuing a renowned ivory trader. On his journey Marlow encounters the darkness of the Congo wilderness, the darkness of the Europeans' cruel treatment of the natives, and the darkness within every human being for committing heinous acts of evil.The Heart of Darkness was based on Joseph Conrad's experiences as a steamship captain in the Congo. Conrad interwove his observations of the darkness in mankind, man's potential for duplicity, and the struggle between good and evil in everyone's soul. Widely regarded as a significant work of British literature, it was adapted by Orson Welles for the Mercury Theatre, and used as the basis for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

About the Author

Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 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 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. Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew, among other things, on his native Poland's national experiences and on his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world-including imperialism and colonialism-and that profoundly explore the human psyche.

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