Book description
Conrad's aim was 'by the power of the written word, to make you hear,
to make you feel . . . before all, to make you see' Heart of Darkness,
his exploration of European colonialism in Africa and of elusive human
values, embodies more profoundly than almost any other modern fiction
the difficulty of 'seeing', its relativity and shifting compromise.
Portraying a young man's first sea-voyage to the East in Youth, an
unenlightened maturity in Heart of Darkness, and the blind old age of
Captain Whalley in The End of the Tether, the stories in this volume are
united in their theme - the 'Ages of Man' - and in their scepticism.
Conrad's vision has influenced twentieth-century writers and artists
from T. S. Eliot to Jorge Luis Borges and Werner Herzog, and continues
to draw critical fire. In his stimulating introduction John Lyon
discusses the links between these three stories, the critiques of Chinua
Achebe and Edward Said, and the ebb and flow of Conrad's magnificent
narrative art. Joseph Conrad (originally J zef Teodor Konrad Nalecz
Korzeniowski) was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under Tsarist
autocracy. In 1896 he settled in Kent, where he produced within fifteen
years such modern classics as
Youth
, Heart of Darkness
, Lord Jim
, Typhoon
, Nostromo
, The Secret Agent
and Under Western Eyes
. He continued to write until his death in 1924.
