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  • Published: 6 August 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784875305
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

Heart of Darkness

And Youth (Vintage Voyages)




VINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind


Follow a dark and powerful journey up the Congo River in Conrad’s sharp and incisive exploration of the damages of imperialism.

Life on the river is brutal, and unknown threats lurk in the darkness; the silence of the jungle is broken only by the ominous sound of drumming.

Marlow's mission to captain a steamer upriver into the dense interior leads him into conflict with the others who haunt the forest. But his decision to hunt down the mysterious Mr Kurtz, an ivory trader who is the subject of sinister rumours, leads him into more than just physical peril.

‘Demands to be read. At its core lies the enigmatic, awesome Kurtz, and civilisation itself’ Guardian

VINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind

  • Published: 6 August 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784875305
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

Other books in the series

About the author

Joseph Conrad

Józef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski was born in the Ukraine on 3 December 1857. His parents were Polish and had both died in exile by the time Conrad was eleven. His uncle then became his guardian and looked after him in Krakow until he was sixteen when he went to sea and sailed on French and British ships. He was made British citizen in 1886 and changed his name to Joseph Conrad. In 1889 Conrad visited the Congo and his experiences there inspired Heart of Darkness. In 1894 he published his first novel, Almayer's Folly and went on to write nineteen more as well as many short stories, essays and a memoir. In 1896 he married Jessie George and they later had two sons. Conrad died on 3 August 1924.

Joseph Conrad (originally Józef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski) was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under Tsarist autocracy. His parents, ardent Polish patriots, died when he was a child, following their exile for anti-Russian activities, and he came under the protection of his tradition-conscious uncle, Thaddeus Bobrowski, who watched over him for the next twenty-five years.

In 1874 Bobrowski conceded to his nephew's passionate desire to go to sea, and Conrad travelled to Marseilles, where he served in French merchant vessels before joining a British ship in 1878 as an apprentice.

In 1886 he obtained British nationality and his Master's certificate in the British Merchant Service. Eight years later he left the sea to devote himself to writing, publishing his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1895. The following year he married Jessie George and eventually settled in Kent, where he produced within fifteen years such modern classics as Youth, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo, The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes.

He continued to write until his death in 1924. Today Conrad is generally regarded as one of the greatest writers of fiction in English - his third language. He once described himself as being concerned 'with the ideal value of things, events and people'; in the Preface to The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' he defined his task as 'by the power of the written word ... before all, to make you see'.

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Praise for Heart of Darkness

This small novel is written with intense clarity - sentence for sentence it is still more unsettling than many unpleasant books that have been written since

Anne Enright

Still the debate rages: is Conrad's novella an incisive critique of colonialism, or does it reinforce the very racist values it claims to unmask? Either way, his shrouded account of Marlow's journey into the "god-forsaken wilderness" of the Congo demands to be read. At its core lies the enigmatic, awesome Kurtz, and civilisation itself. "And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth"

Guardian

Conrad's narrative arsenal is awesome... Conrad deals in profundities if he deals in anything, but it is just his ability to clip his own wings in midflight, to puncture his ponderously magnificent dirigibles, that make him such an impressive literary performer

Sunday Times

Conrad broadened the descriptive range of the English language (his glowing and luxuriant delight in words, the haunting decor of the tropics, all that maritime terminology) more than any of his contemporaries

Independent