Joseph Conrad

Jim, a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the Hadj. When the ship starts rapidly taking on water and disaster seems imminent, Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers. A few days later, they are picked up by a British ship. However, the Patna and its passengers are later also saved, and the reprehensible actions of the crew are exposed....

Marlow comes face to face with the corruption and despair that lies at the heart of human existence when he undertakes a journey on behalf of a Belgian trading company up the Congo River in search of the tormented white ivory trader, Kurtz.

Captain MacWhirr cannot fathom anything outside the facts of his own life. His first mate, Mr. Jukes, is the perfect contrast as an imaginative man prone to speaking in figurative language. Though they are opposites, MacWhirr and Jukes respect each other and run a tight ship, until the crew notices the barometer predicting a serve storm. Jukes and the crew suggest alternate paths to MacWhirr, but he is unconvinced. Since MacWhirr has not experienced...

The Secret Agent is widely considered one of Conrad's greatest literary achievements. Set in gloomy 1886 London, the novel follows the life of Alfred Verdoc, a Soho shop owner and secret agent who is a member of a largely ineffectual anarchist cell. During a meeting at an unnamed foreign embassy where he is a covert employee, Verdoc is tasked with bombing the Greenwich Observatory-ostensibly to create public outrage and goad a lax British government...

A new captain must lead his crew to safety and face his own internal struggles as he works to overcome disrespect, insanity, and coming-of-age all while sailing on an unforgiving sea. There is an invisible line that divides life into a before and after-adolescence and adulthood. The unnamed narrator of The Shadow Line is painfully aware of this, but is unsure where the line lies in his life. He recalls a number of rash decisions he has made, some...

Nostromo, a Tale of the Seaboard - Joseph Conrad - Joseph Conrad, who knew the human nature inside out, telling the story of Nostromo and portraying his personages is ironic and even slightly derisive...⍾Every man, somewhere deep inside, has his own share of rascality... And every human doing has two sides...⍾⍾Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find...

Raised by a single Swedish philosopher, Axel Heyst inherits his father's pessimistic view of society. As a child, he is taught about all the dark inclinations of humankind, warping his mind. Axel struggles with these beliefs and the atmosphere of the environment in which he grew up. Because of this, he has a mix of complicated feelings when his father passes away. He decides to leave London and travel the world, which lead him to both adventures and...

The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad 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...

Captain Tom Lingard is on his way to help his friends, a Malay prince and princess, reclaim their stolen land when he gets distracted by a marooned yacht. Lingard feels obliged to help his fellow Europeans out of their plight - and he's increasingly attracted to Edith Travers, the married woman on board - but his rescue of the pleasure boat and its passengers plunges the captain deep into a dangerous vortex of local politics.One of Conrad's less familiar...

All of author Joseph Conrad's works have an air of loneliness and isolation within the plot. This is now thought to be reflective of the author's life as a Polish immigrant living and writing at the height of the British Empire. His prose strikes a chord that resonates deep within the reader, leaving a feeling of immense despondency. Yet with his deep affinity for the melancholy, Conrad was also a highly skilled prose writer. His words allow the reader...