Showing results by author "Joseph Conrad" in All Categories

When Jim, a young merchant seaman, joins a ship carrying Muslims to Mecca, he's flush with heroic daydreams. But after only a few days aboard, the Patna hits something in the night and begins to take on water. In a crucial moment that tests his courage, Jim cowers and abandons ship rather than risk his life to save the pilgrims. Tried for shameful dereliction of duty, the guilt-ridden Englishman sets forth to make amends for his past in the remote territory of Patusan.

From one of the greatest modern writers in world literature comes a magnificent story of love, adventure, and rescue played out against the shimmering South Seas. Alone on a tropical island, a Swedish baron and a beautiful violinist discover the long-lost joys of love. But when two treasure hunters arrive on the beach, the lovers know that evil has invaded their romantic paradise—an evil they are powerless to stop.

Life has the capacity of great moments and attainment, of lives well lived, fulfilling for ourselves and for those we touch. But for others life is arduous. There is no spark to ignite the curiosity, to explore and achieve a stability and a growth to their lives. Indeed their lives, in their own eyes, become almost meaningless, their sense of themselves subsumed under a myriad of problems, whether real or imagined. Seismic events in a life might crush them; the loss of a loved one for instance. Coping is difficult, support hard to find and isolation abounds.

Heyst’s aim to live a solitary existence is cut short when he meets an enchanting English violinist named Lena and brings her back to his island, rescuing her from her predatory patron Schomberg. Together they create a haven and Lena reawakens Heyst’s passion for life, but the world soon breaks in on them as Schomberg exacts his revenge.

Set in the fictional South American country of Costaguana, Nostromo explores the volatile politics and crippling greed surrounding the San Tomé silver mine. The story of power, love, revolutions, loyalty and reward is told with richly evocative description and brilliantly realised characters. But Nostromo is more than an adventure story; it is also a profoundly dark moral fable. Its language is as compellingly resonant as the sea itself; the characters absorbing and complex.

Penguin Classics presents Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, adapted for listening and available as a digital audiobook as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by David Threlfall, the star of the hit Channel 4 series, Shameless. The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, rage - who can tell? But truth - truth stripped of its cloak of time.

The annals of movie history are full of lost treasures – spectacular scripts from world-renowned writers that could have been classics, had they only been made. Now, for the first time, some of these forgotten gems have been brought to life, fully realised as vivid, cinematic radio productions. Scripted by major 20th Century writers, they star a host of A-list actors and feature richly evocative, atmospheric soundtracks.

In these two magnificent novellas Conrad explores the question of self-discovery through powerful and exciting narratives: in Youth, the experienced seaman Marlow tells the story of a young man's coming of age on his first voyage to the East, while in Heart of Darkness he describes with terrifying depth and vividness the slide into corruption of an idealistic trader.

Long hailed as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, Joseph Conrad's tale of one man's descent into the mysterious and deadly Congo jungle to find a messianic ivory trader is a journey into the depths of man's own greed and quest for power. Marlow, our narrator, relates his story of his slow upriver quest to meet the strange and enigmatic Kurtz, who lives isolated in the jungle and is revered by the natives he exploits.

In the 1870s, supporters of the pretender to the throne of Spain take advantage of a young man's attraction to the sea to persuade him to run dangerous missions on their behalf, with the financial support of a beautiful but exceedingly baffling young heiress, with whom the young man is soon giddily in love. Told largely in the first person, the novel is unusual, for Conrad, in focusing largely on the evolving psychology of a young man in the throes of a great romantic passion.

Although Heart of Darkness was one of the first literary texts to provide a critical view of European imperial activities, it was initially read by critics as anything but controversial. While the book was generally admired, it was typically seen either as a condemnation of a certain type of adventurer who could easily take advantage of imperialism’s opportunities, or else as a sentimental novel reinforcing domestic values: Kurtz’s Intended, who appears at the novella’s conclusion, was roundly praised by turn-of-the-century reviewers for her maturity and sentimental appeal. A classic.

Relish the wonders of Classic Literature in B.J. Harrison’s second season of The Classic Tales Podcast. Experience more of the greatest fiction ever written, as it comes to life in this unprecedented audiobook. Adventure from Jack London and Edgar Rice Burroughs, gothic suspense from Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allan Poe, humor from Mark Twain and P.G. Wodehouse - this collection has it all, complete and unabridged.

The story of the enigmatic Kurtz and his outpost in deepest Congo is superbly narrated by the gifted Ralph Cosham. Also included is "The Lagoon", a story of courage and love in the South Pacific.

River steamboat captain Charles Marlow has set forth on the Congo in Africa to find the enigmatic European trader Mr. Kurtz. Preceded by his reputation as a brilliant emissary of progress, Kurtz has now established himself as a god among the natives in "one of the darkest places on earth." Marlow suspects something else of Kurtz: he has gone mad.

Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad's novel of political treachery and oppression, of betrayal, guilt, and intrigue, begins with a bomb that kills its intended target, a hated Russian minister of police, along with a number of innocent bystanders. A young student named Razumov hides the perpetrator, then betrays him and becomes a spy among his exiled comrades. He faces a moral dilemma from which there is no escape.

In an effort to avoid heartbreak and suffering, Axel Heyst has closed off his heart to the world. Raised by a single father, a philosopher with an exceedingly pessimistic view of humanity, there was little hope for Axel the dreamer to turn out otherwise. Upon the death of his father, Axel leaves his home in England to wander the world with no path. Eventually he joins a coal company’s expedition to a remote island in the Malay Archipelago—the setting of Conrad’s Lord Jim—and on this journey he feels his heart begin to stir.

A través de un personaje ficticio (el viejo marinero "Marlow"), Conrad describe una travesía por el río Congo en busca del señor "Kurtz" que es el jefe de una explotación de marfil. El encuentro con Kurtz, será la confirmación de la hipócrita actitud colonialista y pone en tela de juicio su carácter de cruzada moral y comercial. El director de cine Francis Ford Coppola se basó en este breve relato para su película Apocalypse Now, que si bien estaba ambientada en la guerra de Vietnam, mantenía el espíritu del relato de Conrad.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Each of the stories in this collection is spun from a simple, if typically wry and bleak, idea. In "Gaspar Ruiz", a South American general who has fought in a war of independence tells his guests a long tale about a notorious strong man that explains the origin of his current domestic arrangements. "The Informer" leads the reader into the depths of a political conspiracy, dealing very slyly indeed with questions of truth and pretence.

Acclaimed as one of the great, albeit disturbing, visionary works of Western civilization, Conrad's haunting tale dramatizes the stark realities of Africa in the colonial period. Heart of Darkness reflects the physical and psychological tragedies Conrad experienced while working in the Belgian Congo in 1890 and is the basis of Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now.