Synopses & Reviews
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
Review
"[Conrad has a] particular form of jolting the reader's attention."
-Ford Madox Ford
Synopsis
Lord Jim tells the story of a young, idealistic Englishman--as unflinching as a hero in a book--who is disgraced by a single act of cowardice while serving as an officer on the Patna, a merchant-ship sailing from an eastern port. His life is ruined: an isolated scandal has assumed horrifying proportions. But, then he is befriended by an older man named Marlow who helps to establish him in exotic Patusan, a remote Malay settlement where his courage is put to the test once more. Lord Jim is a book about courage and cowardice, self-knowledge and personal growth. It is one of the most profound and rewarding psychological novels in English. Set in the context of social change and colonial expansion in late Victorian England, it embodies in Jim the values and turmoil of a fading empire. This new edition uses the first English edition text and includes a new introduction and notes by leading Conrad scholar Jacques Berthoud, glossaries, and an appendix on Conrad's sources and reading.
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
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
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'.