An Outcast of the Islands

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Oxford University Press, 2002 - Fiction - 303 pages
The only annotated edition available, An Outcast of the Islands (1896), Conrad's second novel, is a tale of intrigue in an eastern setting. Peter Willems, a clerk in Macassar, granted a "second chance" at a remote river trading post, falls ever more hopelessly into traps set by himself and others. A parable of human frailty, with love and death the major players, this is a story of a man unable to understand others and fated never to possess his own soul.
 

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Contents

AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS
1
AUTHORS NOTE
281
EXPLANATORY NOTES
284
GLOSSARY OF FOREIGN AND NAUTICAL TERMS
297
Copyright

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About the author (2002)

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.