Joseph Conrad
1) Typhoon
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Captain MacWhirr cannot fathom anything outside the facts of his own life. His first mate, Mr. Jukes, is the perfect contrast as an imaginative man prone to speaking in figurative language. Though they are opposites, MacWhirr and Jukes respect each other and run a tight ship, until the crew notices the barometer predicting a serve storm. Jukes and the crew suggest alternate paths to MacWhirr, but he is unconvinced. Since MacWhirr has not experienced...
2) Nostromo
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"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...
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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....
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Signet classics volume 2114
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Growing up as an orphan, Razumou adopted the belief that all of Russia was his family, a sentiment that he carries into his higher education. Because of this, when talks of revolution start arising in Russia, Razumou decides to stay neutral. However, this becomes increasingly difficult when most of his classmates start to express their ardent support for a revolution. Still, Razumou decides not to take a stand on either side. Since he feels all of...
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The masterpiece of Joseph Conrad’s later years, the autobiographical short novel The Shadow-Line depicts a young man at a crossroads in his life, facing a desperate crisis that marks the “shadow-line” between youth and maturity.This brief but intense story is a dramatically fictionalized account of Conrad’s first command as a young sea captain trapped aboard a becalmed, fever-wracked, and seemingly haunted ship. With...
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Peter Willems is down on his luck. The Dutch clerk has been fired for embezzlement from his job in the Indonesian port city of Makassar, and his scornful wife has abandoned him. Willems' despair lifts after an encounter with Tom Lingard, a sea captain who operates a remote trading post. Lingard hires the drifter to act as his agent, entrusting Willems with knowledge of the secret route across dangerous waters to the post. Once installed in his new...
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The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale is an example of Conrad's later political writing, which moved away from his earlier, seafaring tales. The spy Mr. Verloc moves through London where he encounters anarchism, terrorism and revolutionary groups. Conrad also deals with the notion of exploitation.
The novel's treatment of terrorism caused it to be one of the three most cited works of literature in the American media post Spetember 11, 2001.
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A new captain must lead his crew to safety and face his own internal struggles as he works to overcome disrespect, insanity, and coming-of-age all while sailing on an unforgiving sea.
There is an invisible line that divides life into a before and after-adolescence and adulthood. The unnamed narrator of The Shadow Line is painfully aware of this, but is unsure where the line lies in his life. He recalls a number of rash decisions he has made, some...
9) Victory
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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...
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Chance (1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is "like a beggar, without a right to anything but compassion." After her bankrupt father is imprisoned, she learns the harsh fact that a woman in her position "has no resources but in herself." Her only means of action is to be what she is. Flora's...
11) The Secret Agent
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Inspired by an attempt in 1894 to blow up London’s Greenwich Observatory, The Secret Agent is the unsurpassed original of the long tradition of espionage thrillers that explore the confused motives at the heart of terrorism. Published in 1907, Joseph Conrad’s novel was remarkably prescient, anticipating the political contours of the next century, as well as the classic spy novels of such later writers as Graham Greene and John...
12) Tales of Unrest
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Featuring five works of short fiction from the critically acclaimed author, Joseph Conrad, Tales of Unrest is a fascinating exploration of human struggle and philosophy. Karain: A Memory adopts elements of a traditional ghost story, setting an eerie mood as it explores the duality common among colonial and post-colonial people. The Idiots depict a family driven to murder after a couple stains to raise their intellectually disabled children. With the...
13) The Rover
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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...
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Heart of Darkness: Based on Conrad's own 1890 trip up the Congo River, the story is told by Marlow, the novelist's alter ego. It is the journey into darkness and horror, both literally, as the narrator descends into a sinister jungle landscape, and metaphorically, as he witnesses the depts of moral depravity symbolized by the agent Kurtz.
The Secret Sharer: The tale of a young sea captain's first command as he sails into the Gulf of Siam, and into...
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All of author Joseph Conrad's works have an air of loneliness and isolation within the plot. This is now thought to be reflective of the author's life as a Polish immigrant living and writing at the height of the British Empire. His prose strikes a chord that resonates deep within the reader, leaving a feeling of immense despondency. Yet with his deep affinity for the melancholy, Conrad was also a highly skilled prose writer. His words allow the reader...
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Captain Lingard series volume 3
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The first novel of Conrad's impressive list of works, "Almayer's Folly" revolves around the Dutch trader Kaspar Almayer and his life in the Borneo jungles in the late 19th century. Spurred by his desire for riches, he marries the adopted Malayan daughter of Captain Lingard, an affluent man who then requires Almayer to run his trading post in Sambir, in the Borneo jungles. While his chances of inheriting Lingard's wealth have increased, Almayer is...
17) The Rescue
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Captain Tom Lingard is on his way to help his friends, a Malay prince and princess, reclaim their stolen land when he gets distracted by a marooned yacht. Lingard feels obliged to help his fellow Europeans out of their plight - and he's increasingly attracted to Edith Travers, the married woman on board - but his rescue of the pleasure boat and its passengers plunges the captain deep into a dangerous vortex of local politics.One of Conrad's less familiar...
18) Romance
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John Kemp, a young Englishman thirsting for adventure, journeys to the Caribbean where he meets an influential landowner and becomes entangled in the dangerous world of local pirates.
Romance was the final of three fictional collaborations between authors Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford (writing under the name of F. M. Hueffer). Forged before either author achieved literary fame and fortune, the collaboration between Conrad and Ford resulted in...
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A young sea captain tests his mettle off the coast of Siam in this nineteenth-century psychological tale from the author of Heart of Darkness. When his sailing ship is anchored in the Gulf of Siam-now Thailand-a first-time sea captain questions his ability to command. Anxious and eager for his crew to like him, he takes the first shift of the night watch. Alone in the dark, he encounters a mysterious man swimming alongside the vessel. The captain...
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This is an exciting, atmospheric work that works on several levels: partly a story of tropical adventures, partly a melodramatic novel, partly a psychological thriller, partly a criticism of the empire. Axel Heist lives on an island in present-day Indonesia with a Chinese aide Wang. Heist visits a nearby island when a women's group plays in a hotel owned by Mr. Schomberg. Schomberg tries to impose himself sexually on one of the band members, Alma,...