Joseph Conrad

"Nostromo, A Tale of the Seaboard" is set in the South American country of Costaguana, and more specifically in that country's Occidental Province and its port city of Sulaco. Though Costaguana is a fictional nation, its geography as described in the book resembles real-life Colombia. Costaguana has a long history of tyranny, revolution and warfare, but has recently experienced a period of stability under the dictator Ribiera. Charles Gould is a native...

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. The pawn of Babalatchi, the one-eyed schemer of power politics, and of the rich Abdulla, who uses Willems to increase his own wealth, his fate is sealed by his lover, Aissa, and by Almayer, an embittered fellow countryman. An Outcast of the Islands (1896), Conrad's second novel, is a tale of intrigue...

Almayer, an immigrant living on the Malayan continent with his native wife and his daughter, Nina, dreams of riches, and so pursues hidden gold mines and begins construction on a mansion to impress the British forces that he believes are coming to conquer the region. However, none of Almayer's schemes come through for him, and his recklessness results in a desperate situation for him and his family. Almayer's Folly was Joseph Conrad's first novel....

Raised by a single Swedish philosopher, Axel Heyst inherits his father's pessimistic view of society. As a child, he is taught about all the dark inclinations of humankind, warping his mind. Axel struggles with these beliefs and the atmosphere of the environment in which he grew up. Because of this, he has a mix of complicated feelings when his father passes away. He decides to leave London and travel the world, which lead him to both adventures and...

Nostromo, a Tale of the Seaboard - Joseph Conrad - Joseph Conrad, who knew the human nature inside out, telling the story of Nostromo and portraying his personages is ironic and even slightly derisive...⍾Every man, somewhere deep inside, has his own share of rascality... And every human doing has two sides...⍾⍾Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find...

A novel of naval life in Napoleonic France. After forty years of piracy on Eastern seas, Citizen Peyrol returns to his native France, a country now ravaged and scarred by revolution and war. Looking for peace in which to end his days, he withdraws to a safe harbor in a remote farmhouse on Escampobar Peninsula, which looks out to the distant Mediterranean, where the lovely Arlette lives with her aunt and the revolutionary Scevola. But the arrival of...

The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad First published in 1906, The Mirror of the Sea was the first of Joseph Conrad's two autobiographical memoirs. Discussing it, he called the book "a very intimate revelation. . . . I have attempted here to lay bare with the unreserve of a last hour's confession the terms of my relation with the sea, which beginning mysteriously, like any great passion the inscrutable Gods send to mortals, went on unreasoning and...

Henry Whalley is a true sailor, earning years of experience as a ship's captain before his retirement. Faced with unexpected financial problems and a desire to help his married daughter earn her place in the world, Whalley is forced to sell his boat and buy his way back into service on a trade vessel. But Whalley is living so close to financial ruin that any small deviation from his course will put him over the edge . . . The End of the Tether is...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.The Arrow of Gold is Joseph Conrad's most romantic novel, literally a cloak-and-dagger tale set in the French port of Marseilles and the adjacent "sea of classic adventures." The principal characters are Monsieur George, a young sailor ready for love and adventure, and Doña Rita, a young woman of extraordinary wealth and beauty haunted by a mysterious threat. Supporters...

Amy Foster is a short story by Joseph Conrad written in 1901. A poor emigrant from Central Europe sailing from Hamburg to America is shipwrecked off the coast of England. The residents of nearby villages, at first unaware of the sinking, and hence of the possibility of survivors, regard him as a dangerous tramp and madman. He speaks no English, his strange foreign language frightens them, and they offer him no assistance. Eventually "Yanko Goorall"...