Heart of Darkness

And Youth (Vintage Voyages)

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Summary

Follow a dark and powerful journey up the Congo River in Conrad’s sharp and incisive exploration of the damages of imperialism.

Life on the river is brutal, and unknown threats lurk in the darkness; the silence of the jungle is broken only by the ominous sound of drumming.

Marlow's mission to captain a steamer upriver into the dense interior leads him into conflict with the others who haunt the forest. But his decision to hunt down the mysterious Mr Kurtz, an ivory trader who is the subject of sinister rumours, leads him into more than just physical peril.

‘Demands to be read. At its core lies the enigmatic, awesome Kurtz, and civilisation itself’ Guardian

VINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind

Reviews

This small novel is written with intense clarity - sentence for sentence it is still more unsettling than many unpleasant books that have been written since
Anne Enright

About the author

Joseph Conrad

Józef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski was born in the Ukraine on 3 December 1857. His parents were Polish and had both died in exile by the time Conrad was eleven. His uncle then became his guardian and looked after him in Krakow until he was sixteen when he went to sea and sailed on French and British ships. He was made British citizen in 1886 and changed his name to Joseph Conrad. In 1889 Conrad visited the Congo and his experiences there inspired Heart of Darkness. In 1894 he published his first novel, Almayer's Folly and went on to write nineteen more as well as many short stories, essays and a memoir. In 1896 he married Jessie George and they later had two sons. Conrad died on 3 August 1924.

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