Synopses & Reviews
ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED
BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP
Two of Joseph Conrad's most compelling and haunting works, in which the deepest perceptions and desires of the human heart and mind are explored.
EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES:
- A concise introduction that gives readers important background information
- A chronology of the author's life and work
- A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
- An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations
- Detailed explanatory notes
- Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work
- Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
- A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience
Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.
SERIES EDITED BY CYNTHIA BRANTLEY JOHNSON
Review
"[Conrad has a] particular form of jolting the reader's attention."
-Ford Madox Ford
Synopsis
In this pair of literary voyages into the inner self, Joseph Conrad has written two of the most chilling, disturbing, and noteworthy pieces of fiction of the twentieth century. Heart of Darkness is a devastating commentary on the corruptibility of humanity. Based on Conrad s own 1890 trip up the Congo River, the story is told by Marlow, the novelist s alter ego. It is a journey into darkness and horror both literally, as the narrator descends into a sinister jungle landscape, and metaphorically, as he encounters the morally depraved Mr. Kurtz.
The Secret Sharer is the tale of a young sea captain s first command as he sails into the Gulf of Siam and into an encounter with his mysterious double, the shadow self of the unconscious mind.
Joseph Conrad boldly experimented with the novella and novel forms, filled his writing with the exotic places he himself had traveled, and concerned himself with honor, guilt, moral alienation, and sin.
Heart of Darkness and
The Secret Sharer encapsulate his literary achievements and his haunting portrayal of the dark side of man.
With an Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates and an Afterword by Vince Passaro
"
Synopsis
Two of Conrad’s BEST-KNOWN works—in a single volume In this pair of literary voyages into the inner self, Joseph Conrad has written two of the most chilling, disturbing, and noteworthy pieces of fiction of the twentieth century.
Synopsis
In this pair of literary voyages into the inner self, Conrad wrote two of the most chilling, disturbing, and noteworthy pieces of fiction of the 20th century. "Heart of Darkness" and "The Secret Sharer" encapsulate his literary achievements--and his haunting portrayal of the dark side of man. Revised reissue.
Synopsis
Two of Conrad’s BEST-KNOWN works—in a single volume In this pair of literary voyages into the inner self, Joseph Conrad has written two of the most chilling, disturbing, and noteworthy pieces of fiction of the twentieth century.
@JungleFever Heading down to Africa on a boat. Too hot! I get the creeping sense this job isn’t going to be as cushy as they made it sound.
The natives seem unhappy. Some are even violent! Why don’t they appreciate how much we’ve done for them? Ungrateful welfare leeches, I say!
From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less
Synopsis
Inspired by an actual attempt in 1894 to blow up London's Greenwich Observatory, here is a chillingly prophetic examination of contemporary terrorism-and the literary precursor to today's espionage thriller.
Synopsis
A bold young English sailor has despised himself ever since an impulsive moment of cowardice. Jim moves East to Patusan, where natives worship him-and he may be able to find redemption...
Synopsis
This chillingly prophetic examination of terrorism by the author of Heart of Darkness is the literary precursor to the espionage thrillers of Graham Greene and John Le Carré.
Inspired by an actual attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, The Secret Agent portrays the world of late-nineteenth-century London, with its fatuous civil servants, corrupt police, and squalid underworld characters like Verloc, a pornographer acting as a government informant. Verlocs assignment is to provoke the radicals whose group he has penetrated into committing an act of such violence that they will be discredited and their appeal to the masses destroyed. With its questionable characters and amoral caricatures, the novel is as much a black satire of English society as a frightening mirror of the present day.
With an Introduction by E. L. Doctorow and a New Afterword
About the Author
Joseph Conrad (originally Józef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski) was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under Tsarist autocracy. His parents, ardent Polish patriots, died when he was a child, following their exile for anti-Russian activities, and he came under the protection of his tradition-conscious uncle, Thaddeus Bobrowski, who watched over him for the next twenty-five years. In 1874 Bobrowski conceded to his nephew's passionate desire to go to sea, and Conrad travelled to Marseilles, where he served in French merchant vessels before joining a British ship in 1878 as an apprentice. In 1886 he obtained British nationality and his Master's certificate in the British Merchant Service. Eight years later he left the sea to devote himself to writing, publishing his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1895. The following year he married Jessie George and eventually 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. Today Conrad is generally regarded as one of the greatest writers of fiction in Englishhis third language. He once described himself as being concerned 'with the ideal value of things, events and people'; in the Preface to The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' he defined his task as 'by the power of the written word ... before all, to make you see'.