| Language | English |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 81-7167-479-8 |
| ISBN-13 | 9788171674794 |
| No of pages | 133 |
| Font Size | Medium |
| Book Publisher | Rupa |
| Published Date | 01 Apr 2001 |
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodora Konrad Karnowski ) was a Polish-born English novelist who today is most famous for Heart of Darkness, his fictionalized account of Colonial Africa.
Conrad left his native Poland in his middle teens to avoid conscription into the Russian Army. He joined the French Merchant Marine and briefly employed himself as a wartime gunrunner.
He then began to work aboard British ships, learning English from his shipmates. He was made a Master Mariner, and served more than sixteen years before an event inspired him to try his hand at writing.
He was hired to take a steamship into Africa, and according to Conrad, the experience of seeing firsthand the horrors of colonial rule left him a changed man.
Joseph Conrad settled in England in 1894, the year before he published his first novel. He was deeply interested in a small number of writers both in French and English whose work he studied carefully.
This was useful when, because a need to come to terms with his experience, lead him to write Heart of Darkness, in 1899, which was followed by other fictionalized explorations of his life.
He has been lauded as one of the most powerful, insightful, and disturbing novelists in the English canon despite coming to English later in life, which allowed him to combine it with the sensibilities of French, Russian, and Polish literature.
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Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Polish novelist Joseph Conrad. The book is about the life of Charles Marlow who works as an ivory transporter on the Congo river in Central Africa. The book talks about Marlow's experience on his perilous journey on the Congo river in order to rescue his employer's agent, a fabled and terrifying Mr. Klutz. The story is a complex elaboration on the modern world's attitude and conscience and explores the differences in the constitution of a barbarian society and a civilized society.
As Marlow journeys through Central Africa, he is horrified and perplexed with what he encounters along his way and is distraught by the weight that weighs on his consciousness as he moves forward against all odds to save one man with the death of many he witnesses as he does so. On finally finding Mr. Klutz, Marlow finds himself calling into question all of his assumptions and beliefs about civilization and human nature.
Heart of Darkness is a three part serial story that is read in numerous schools by students and is interpreted many a number of times by various critics. It shows Conrad's finest, most intense and most sophisticated way of writing. The book was published in 2001 by Rupa and is available in paperback.
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