Heart of Darkness: 'As Powerful a Condemnation of Imperialism as Has Ever Been Written'

Front Cover
Green Integer, 2003 - Fiction - 200 pages
In this reprinting of the great Conrad classic, Green Integer presents his tale of white colonialism and the effects of the African world on European self-satisfaction. Marlow's tale of his voyage through the Congo and the legends surround a previous explorer-adventurer named Kurtz gradually reveal the dark horros of both the Western impact on Africa and its effects on Western civilisation. Conrad's tale is a brilliant symbolic work as well as a great adventure story. The book, one of the true classics of 20th century literature endures as a favourite to this day.

Other editions - View all

About the author (2003)

Joseph Conrad is recognized as one of the 20th century's greatest English language novelists. He was born Jozef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857, in the Polish Ukraine. His father, a writer and translator, was from Polish nobility, but political activity against Russian oppression led to his exile. Conrad was orphaned at a young age and subsequently raised by his uncle. At 17 he went to sea, an experience that shaped the bleak view of human nature which he expressed in his fiction. In such works as Lord Jim (1900), Youth (1902), and Nostromo (1904), Conrad depicts individuals thrust by circumstances beyond their control into moral and emotional dilemmas. His novel Heart of Darkness (1902), perhaps his best known and most influential work, narrates a literal journey to the center of the African jungle. This novel inspired the acclaimed motion picture Apocalypse Now. After the publication of his first novel, Almayer's Folly (1895), Conrad gave up the sea. He produced thirteen novels, two volumes of memoirs, and twenty-eight short stories. He died on August 3, 1924, in England.

Bibliographic information