Showing results by author "Joseph Conrad" in All Categories

Flora de Barral, the daughter of a bankrupt businessman and swindler, must find her own way in the world when her father is convicted of financial speculation. Unfortunately, this is no easy thing for a single and vulnerable young woman in turn-of-the-century London.

Joseph Conrad's searing tale of one of the strangest and most memorable journeys ever taken. Quite simply the scariest book ever written, this is a searing tale of one of the strangest and most memorable journeys ever undertaken - to the heart of a geographical and psychological wilderness from which no-one returns unscarred. For this isn't simply a journey up an uncharted river into a geographical wilderness; rather, it's a trip deep into our collective subconscious.

First published in 1897, The Nigger of the Narcissus is the story of a black West Indian, James Wait, who signs aboard the Narcissus, a merchant sailing ship on a journey from Bombay to London. Wait almost immediately becomes ill and bedridden for the remainder of the journey, splitting the crew into factions. It has long been considered one of Joseph Conrad's best and most important works.

An unsettling tale of plague, drift and terror, The Shadow-Line documents a young seaman’s coming of age after he is recruited to captain a ship for the first time. Bad luck and disease haunt the inexperienced hero and his crew, and the evil legacy of the previous captain overshadows them with a feeling of supernatural menace.

Jim, the first mate aboard a small steamer named the Patna, travels from port to port in the Pacific Ocean. When the ship hits floating wreckage, Jim and the crew are forced to abandon it, leaving hundreds of ethnic travelers onboard. However, Jim's reprehensible actions are soon discovered by the court, and he is compelled to face his guilt and redeem himself - a journey that leads him to a remote exotic location where he is revered as the Lord, "Tuan Jim".

Dark allegory describes Marlow's journey up the Congo River and his meeting with and fascination by Mr. Kurtz, a mysterious personage who dominates the unruly inhabitants of the region. A masterly blend of adventure, character development and psychological penetration. Considered by many to be Conrad's finest, most enigmatic story.

A classic of early literary modernism, Lord Jim tells the story of a young "simple and sensitive character" who loses his honor in a display of cowardice at sea -- and of his expiation of that sin against his own "shadowy ideal of conduct" on the remote island of Patusan. The novel, written by Conrad for magazine serialization during an intense and chaotic ten months in 1899 and 1900, has, in the words of Thomas C. Moser, "the rare distinction of being a masterpiece in two separate genres. It is at once an exotic adventure story of the Eastern seas in the popular tradition of Kipling and ...

Introspective sailor Charles Marlow recounts a life-changing and deeply unsettling expedition to Congo as riverboat captain for a Belgian trading company. He is eager to find Kurtz – an allegedly progressive thinker and talented man – during his travels. The journey to Africa is long and arduous; the surrounding jungle is dense and oppressively quiet, causing havoc among the ship’s crew. Marlow also begins to sense all is not well with Kurtz – the others seem to be fearful of him and he is rumoured to be ill.

Nostromo is a sweeping novel of political turmoil, revolution, and greed in the fictional South American country of Costaguana. As corruption and chaos ensue, Nostromo, a trusted worker, is tasked with safeguarding a fortune in silver—only to become entangled in a struggle between power and morality.

One of seven of these 'unmade movies' available on audio, Victory is a dark, morally complex drama set in the Dutch East Indies in 1900. It tells the story of Baron Heyst, a mysterious Swedish recluse living alone on a deserted island whose life is changed forever when he visits a neighbouring island and falls in love with young English violinist Lena. Pursued by predatory older men, Lena is drawn to Heyst and escapes with him to his island retreat....

Set in Malaya, Almayer's Folly is Joseph Conrad's first novel. In it, he charts the decline of a Dutch merchant after a 25 year struggle against overwhelming odds. Though married to a bitter and hateful Malayan wife, Almayer refuses to accept the financial ruin which he has precipitated. Instead, he dreams of fantastic wealth and a return to the civilization of his youth, accompanied by his loving daughter, Nina.

The London Classics Collection: Stories of the City allows you to step into the heart of London with a curated selection of iconic literary works that explore the soul of one of the world's most fascinating cities. From the smoky alleys of Victorian London to the political upheavals of the 20th century, this collection brings together stories that capture the city's rich history, diverse characters, and unflinching reflections on society.

Penguin Classics presents Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, adapted for listening and available as a digital audiobook as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by David Threlfall, the star of the hit Channel 4 series, Shameless. The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, rage - who can tell? But truth - truth stripped of its cloak of time.

First published in 1906, The Mirror of the Sea was the first of Joseph Conrad’s two autobiographical memoirs. Discussing it, he called the book “a very intimate revelation...I have attempted here to lay bare with the unreserve of a last hour’s confession the terms of my relation with the sea, which beginning mysteriously, like any great passion the inscrutable Gods send to mortals, went on unreasoning and invincible, surviving the test of disillusion, defying the disenchantment that lurks in every day of a strenuous life"....

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads this Joseph Conrad classic tale of two white traders, Carlier and Kayerts, comical and pathetic, who move from polite society to the Congo, where they hope to become wealthy on the "Dark Continent" by spreading commerce and civilization to black Africa. But as was often the case, the longer they are away from civilization, the more the refinements of civilization slip away, along with their sanity.

Marlow (nombre ficticio que usa Conrad) remonta el río Congo como capitán de barco en un tiempo en el que la región se encontraba bajo el dominio colonial belga, que saqueaba el país a base de las más terribles atrocidades. Marlow va en busca de Kurtz, el jefe de una explotación de marfil que ha establecido un verdadero régimen de terror en el lugar. Marlow jamás olvidará lo que vio en ese viaje a las tinieblas de África y del alma humana.

Heyst’s aim to live a solitary existence is cut short when he meets an enchanting English violinist named Lena and brings her back to his island, rescuing her from her predatory patron Schomberg. Together they create a haven and Lena reawakens Heyst’s passion for life, but the world soon breaks in on them as Schomberg exacts his revenge.

First published in 1902, Conrad's story describes intensely and in stark detail how greed can so easily drive civilised and enlightened men to revert to primitive savagery. Set against the background of the European ivory trade in Africa, Heart Of Darkness is narrator Marlow's account of his journey in search of the legendary and mystical Kurtz, the most successful trader of them all, who is now reported to be ill.

This work set the style for a whole class of literature, a work that the critic Morton Dauwen Zabel calls an example of Conrad's "central theme...the grip of circumstances that enforce self-discovery and its cognate, the discovery of reality and truth...." It is a novel about a man's lifelong efforts to atone for an act of instinctive cowardice.

In the only novel Conrad set in London, The Secret Agent communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verloc, a Russian spy working for the police, and ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho. His masters instruct him to discredit the anarchists in a humiliating fashion, and when his evil plan goes horribly awry, Verlac must deal with the repercussions of his actions.