Biographical noteJoseph Conrad was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under Tsarist autocracy. In 1874 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. 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 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.Allan Simmons is Reader in English Literature at St Mary's College. He is the author of Joseph Conrad (2006) for Palgrave.J.H. Stape is the author of The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad (1996) and Conrad's Notes on Life and Letters (2004). Main descriptionThis compact novel, completed in 1900, as with so many of the great novels of the time, is at its baseline a book of the sea. An English boy in a simple town has dreams bigger than the outdoors and embarks at an early age into the sailor's life. The waters he travels reward him with the ability to explore the human spirit, while Joseph Conrad launches the story into both an exercise of his technical prowess and a delicately crafted picture of a character who reaches the status of a literary hero.
Presents a story 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.
Axel Heyst, a dreamer and a restless drifter, believes he can avoid suffering by cutting himself off from others. Then he becomes involved in the operation of a coal company on a remote island in the Malay Archipelago, and when it fails he turns his back on humanity once more.
'It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall protecting all the homes of the town, had sent a wave over her head' One of Conrad's most powerful, gripping stories Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, The Secret Sharer and Other Stories, Typhoon and Other Stories and Under Western Eyes are available in Penguin Classics.
This is the only novel that Conrad set in London, and it communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894. Verloc, a Russian spy who is also working for the police, is ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho.
The introduction discusses the link between the three works and then discusses more specific issues - the recent attack on Conrad as racist by Achebe, and Conrad as imperialist by Trilling - as well as looking at how the narratives achieve their effects.
Marlow voyages into the wildness and jungle of the Belgian Congo to meet Kurtz, a company agent, and having found him, realizes that Kurtz has won supremacy over the natives through unrestrained violence. The story explores the workings of the subconscious, and addresses political imperialism.
Biographical noteJoseph Conrad (originally Józef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski) was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under Tsarist autocracy. In 1896 he 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. Main description'It was I who removed de P- this morning.' With these chilling words Victor Haldin shatters the solitary, industrious existence of Razumov, his fellow student at St Petersburg University. Razumov aims to overcome the denial of his noble birth by a brilliant career in the tsarist bureaucracy created by Peter the Great. But in pre-revolutionary Russia Peter's legacy is autocracy tempered by assassination; and Razumov is soon caught in a tragic web with Haldin's trustful sister Natalia in spy-haunted Geneva. Their fateful story is told by an elderly Englishman who loves Natalia but plays his part of a 'dense Westerner' to the end.
