Heart-of Darkness is based on Conrads own experiences in the Belgian Congo. It is a harrowing and often frightening vision of man's greed run amok. At the centre of the tale is Kurtz, a man who has divested himself of all moral and ethical constraints, who becomes a godlike figure to the native inhabitants as he destroys nearly everything in his path in the hunt for ivory. One of the great works of twentieth-century fiction, Conrad captures completely the horror and despair wrought by Western imperialism. Lord Jim is a superb character study told from different perspectives. Jim, the title character, is a strong and robust sailor who seems to be the ideal heroic Englishman. But his actions throughout contradict his appearance. Conrad portrays a man trapped by a romantic vision of himself, who, when tested by mundane reality, fails to live up to his ideals in a gross dereliction of duty. He betrays his code of honour, and, in the end, trying to redeem himself. he destroys himself and the people who trusted in him. The Secret Agent is Conrad's first novel with an urban setting. The story revolves around the attempt by a seedy double agent to bomb the Greenwich Observatory in London. Conrad's descriptions of the city of London are almost Dickensian - dreary and gloomy, and as bleak and empty as the lives of the characters portrayed in the novel. It is a scathing indictment of European politics and is populated by cynical, and often ineffectual, bureaucrats and buffoonish anarchists. In Under Western Eyes, a man becomes unwillingly involved in the labyrinthian underworld of Russian counter-revolutionary activities after committing an act of betrayal. He is pushed to the extreme limits of psychological endurance as his alienation as a spy and his own sense of guilt overtake him. It is a novel of Dostoyevskian power, where sin and redemption exact a high price. Joseph Conrad is considered to be one of the great masters of English prose. His achievement is remarkable considering that he was Polish by birth and only began to learn English when he was twenty-one and enlisted in the British merchant marine. His experiences as a seaman provided material and inspiration for his early works. Although in his lifetime he was labelled a sea writer, his accomplishment as a novelist goes beyond this categorisation. Conrad's novels are explorations into the extremes of human experience. His characters are often forced to make moral choices, usually in life or death situations, that provoke consequences that reveal society's limitations. He presents a world that is brutally indifferent and often hostile. The works in this collection - Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, and Under Western Eyes are powerful and masterful, and realize Conrad's goal of rendering "the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect."
Hard cover Beginnings of foxing
Condition: 2
