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1Heart of Darkness

By Joseph Conrad

Set in a time of oppressive colonisation, when large areas of the world were still unknown to Europe, and Africa was literally on maps and minds as a mysterious shadow, Heart of Darkness famously explores the rituals of civilisation and barbarism, and the frighteningly fine line between them.<br /><br /> We get the tale through a classic unreliable narrator, relating as Marlow, a ship’s captain, tells how he was sent by the Company to retrieve the wayward Kurtz, and was shaken to discover the true depths of darkness in that creature’s, and in his own, soul. Conrad based the work closely on his own terrible experience in the Congo. <br /><br /> This work has been reinterpreted and adapted into many modern forms, the most well known being the film Apocalypse Now.<br /> (Summary written by Marlo Dianne)

2Lord Jim

By Joseph Conrad

A classic of early literary modernism, Lord Jim tells the story of a young "simple and sensitive character" who loses his honor in a display of cowardice at sea -- and of his expiation of that sin against his own "shadowy ideal of conduct" on the remote island of Patusan. The novel, written by Conrad for magazine serialization during an intense and chaotic ten months in 1899 and 1900, has, in the words of Thomas C. Moser, "the rare distinction of being a masterpiece in two separate genres. It is at once an exotic adventure story of the Eastern seas in the popular tradition of Kipling and Stevenson and a complexly wrought 'art novel' in the tradition of Flaubert and James. (summary by Stewart Wills)

3Secret Agent

By Joseph Conrad

<em>The Secret Agent</em> is Conrad's dark, and darkly comic story of a band of spies, anarchists, agents-provocateurs plotting and counter-plotting in the back streets of London in the early 20th Century. The novel centers on Verloc, a shop-owner, phony-anarchist and double-agent, who becomes embroiled in an ambitious terrorist plan to bomb the Greenwich Observatory. (Summary by Hugh McGuire)

4Youth, a Narrative

By Joseph Conrad

An autobiographical short story written in 1898 and included as the first story in the 1902 volume <I>Youth, a Narrative</I>, and Two Other Stories. This volume also includes Heart of Darkness and The End of the Tether, which are concerned with maturity and old age, respectively. "Youth" is narrated by Charles Marlow who is also the narrator of Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and Chance. <I>Youth</I> depicts his first journey to the East." (summary from Wikipedia)

5Typhoon

By Joseph Conrad

<i>Typhoon</i> is a short novel by Joseph Conrad, begun in 1899 and published in <i>Pall Mall Magazine</i> in 1902. It is a classic sea yarn that describes how Captain Macwhirr sails the Siamese steamer Nan-Shan into a typhoon. Other characters include the young Jukes and Solomon, the head engineer. The novel classically evokes the sea-faring life at the turn of the century. While Macwhirr is emotionally estranged from his family and crew, and though he refuses to consider an alternate course to skirt the typhoon, his indomitable will in the face of a superior natural force elicits grudging admiration. (Summary from Wikipedia)

6Mirror of the Sea

By Joseph Conrad

The Mirror of the Sea (collection of autobiographical essays first published in various magazines 1904-6), 1906 (Summary from Wikipedia)

7Point of Honor

By Joseph Conrad

Set during the Napoleonic Wars, this story features two French Hussar officers, D'Hubert and Feraud. Their quarrel over an initially minor incident turns into a bitter, long-drawn out struggle over the following fifteen years, interwoven with the larger conflict that provides its backdrop. At the beginning, Feraud is the one who jealously guards his honor and repeatedly demands satisfaction anew when a duelling encounter ends inconclusively; he aggressively pursues every opportunity to locate and duel his foe. As the story progresses, D'Hubert also finds himself caught up in the contest, unable to back down or walk away. <BR><BR>This Conrad short story evidently has its genesis in the real duels that two French Hussar officers fought in the Napoleonic era. Their names were Dupont and Fournier, which Conrad disguised slightly, changing Dupont into D'Hubert and Fournier into Feraud. In 1977, it was turned into a movie, "The Duellists", starring Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel. (summary adapted from Wikipedia)

8Nostromo

By Joseph Conrad

Señor Gould is a native Costaguanan of English descent who owns the silver-mining concession in Sulaco. He is tired of the political instability in Costaguana and its concomitant corruption, and puts his weight behind the Ribierist project, which he believes will finally bring stability to the country after years of misrule and tyranny by self-serving dictators. Instead, the silver mine and the wealth it has generated become a magnet for local warlords to fight over, plunging Costaguana into a new round of chaos. Among others, the revolutionary Montero invades Sulaco; Señor Gould, adamant that his silver should not become spoil for his enemies, entrusts it to Nostromo, the trusted "capataz de los cargadores" (head longshoreman). <br><br> Nostromo is an Italian expatriate who has risen to that position through his daring exploits. ("Nostromo" is Italian for "mate" or "boatswain," as well as a contraction of nostro uomo — "our man.") He is so named by his employer, Captain Mitchell. "Nostromo's" real name is Giovanni Battista Fidanza — Fidanza meaning "trust" in archaic Italian. <br><br> Nostromo is what would today be called a shameless self-publicist. He is believed by Señor Gould to be incorruptible, and for this reason is entrusted with hiding the silver from the revolutionaries. He accepts the mission not out of loyalty to Señor Gould, but rather because he sees an opportunity to increase his own fame. (Summary from Wikipedia)

9Tales of Unrest

By Joseph Conrad

Tales of Unrest (1898) is the first collection of short stories by Joseph Conrad published in his lifetime.<BR><BR>Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), a Polish-born English novelist, was a master in the formats of long short story and novella, a form of story longer than conventional short story but shorter than a novel. Some of Conrad's most acclaimed works have been written in these formats, most notably Heart of Darkness (1899).<BR><BR>Tales of Unrest contains five stories; Karain: A Memory (written 1897; read by Jhiu), The Idiots (1896; read by Ann Boulais), An Outpost of Progress (1896; read by Kristine Bekere), The Return (1897; read by Raerity) and The Lagoon (1896; read by David Lazarus). Author's note read by Sibella Denton. (Summary by Illiterati)

10Amy Foster

By Joseph Conrad

Classic shortish story by Conrad that relates his self-thought alienation from British society, as a young foreign man survives a shipwreck off the coast of Kent, England only to be shunned by most of the townsfolk. The one exception is the loving, if dull-witted, Miss Foster. (Summary by BellonaTimes)

11Nigger of the Narcissus

By Joseph Conrad

This is the story of a voyage of a merchant sailing ship from Bombay to England, set in the very late 19th century. “It was a bad winter off the Cape that year.” From Wikipedia: “The novel is seen as an allegory about isolation and solidarity, the ship's company serving as a microcosm of a social group.” As to the title, one can only ask, “What WERE you thinking?” (Introduction by Tom Crawford)

12Secret Sharer

By Joseph Conrad

A young untested ship captain finds a man named Leggatt clinging to the side of his ship. The Captain makes the unusual decision to hide Leggatt in his quarters. What is he thinking? Conrad will tell us. - The Secret Sharer was first published in the August and September 1910 issues of Harper’s Magazine (Summary by Gregg Margarite)

13Victory: An Island Tale

By Joseph Conrad

Recollections of the life of Axel Heyst, one-time manager of the liquidated Tropical Belt Coal Company in a fictitious island in the Pacific. After retreating from society in response to his professional failures, the misanthrope is drawn back by a romantic affair. (Introduction by S. Kovalchik)

14One Day More

By Joseph Conrad

A one-act play. Eccentric (crazy?) Captain Hagberd has been waiting for years for his son to come home from the sea. He has scrimped and saved, outfitting a house for Harry to inherit upon his return, which will be in only "one day more." He has also planned that Harry will marry Bessie, the repressed maiden next door. Note: The recording was done outside, so there will be some ambient noise (airplanes, lawn mowers, birds, children... etc). (Summary by TriciaG)<br><br><strong>Cast</strong><br>Captain Hagberd: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/5385">Rat King</a><br>Josiah Carvil: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/2911">David Lawrence</a><br>Harry Hagberd / A Lamplighter: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/3157">TriciaG</a><br>Bessie Carvil: <a href="http://librivox.org/reader/205">Esther</a>

15Heart of Darkness (version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series (1899) in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon. The story centres on Charles Marlow, who narrates most of the book. He is an Englishman who takes a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a river-boat captain in Africa. Heart of Darkness exposes the dark side of European colonization while exploring the three levels of darkness that the protagonist, Marlow, encounters: the darkness of the Congo wilderness, the darkness of the Europeans' cruel treatment of the African natives, and the unfathomable darkness within every human being for committing heinous acts of evil. Although Conrad does not give the name of the river, at the time of writing the Congo Free State, the location of the large and important Congo River, was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. In the story, Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver. However, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz, another ivory trader, to civilization, in a cover-up. Kurtz has a reputation throughout the region. (Summary by Wikipedia)

16Chance

By Joseph Conrad

Apparently a two part story about a Damsel and a Knight, perhaps a damsel who depends upon the kindness of strangers. It was originally entitled "Dynamite" and first published by installments in the New York Herald. The book itself was the biggest commercial success for Conrad up until that time, 1913. It allowed Conrad for the first time to settle his financial affairs. The author's disdain for people who live on the land is apparent. A new understanding of the word "enthusiastic" is promulgated. And it is a love story. Let us see how the tale goes. (Summary by JCarson)

17Outcast Of The Islands

By Joseph Conrad

An Outcast of the Islands is the second novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1896, inspired by Conrad's experience as mate of a steamer, the Vigar. The novel details the undoing of Peter Willems, a disreputable, immoral man who, on the run from a scandal in Makassar, finds refuge in a hidden native village, only to betray his benefactors over lust for the tribal chief's daughter. The story features Conrad's recurring character Tom Lingard, who also appears in Almayer's Folly (1895) and The Rescue (1920), in addition to sharing other characters with those novels. This novel was adapted for the screen in 1952 by director Carol Reed, featuring Trevor Howard as Willems, Ralph Richardson as Lingard, Robert Morley, and Wendy Hiller. (Summary by Wikipedia)

18Almayer's Folly

By Joseph Conrad

A European businessman and his Malayan wife have a daughter, Nina. A Malayan prince comes to do trade with the businessman and falls in love with the daughter. Conflict arises when other influences cause distrust in the business partnership and the daughter runs off to be with the prince. (Summary by Kristel Tretter)

19Almayer's Folly (version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

Almayer’s Folly is about a poor businessman who dreams of finding a hidden gold mine and becoming very wealthy. Kaspar Almayer is a white European. He agrees to marry a native Malayan captured by Captain Tom Lingard, his employer, believing the marriage will bring him riches even though he has no love for the woman. They have one daughter named Nina. Almayer relocates with his wife to Malaysian where he hopes to build a trading company and find gold mines. His hopeless daydreams of riches and splendor cause his native wife to loath him.<br /><br /> Almayer, desperate, hopes to find his salvation in Dain Maroola, a Malayan prince, who arrives on the island one day. Maroola agrees to work with Almayer and Lakamba, the Rajah, to send an expedition in search of the gold mines. In fact, Maroola is interested only in Nina with whom he has fallen in love. They plan to secretly leave the island. I can’t tell you more, or I would spoil the story. (Summary by Tom Weiss)

20Under Western Eyes

By Joseph Conrad

Under Western Eyes (1911) is a novel by Joseph Conrad. The novel takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Geneva, Switzerland, and is viewed as Conrad's response to the themes explored in Crime and Punishment, Conrad being reputed to have detested Dostoevsky. It is also, some say, Conrad's response to his own early life; his father was a famous revolutionary imprisoned by the Russians, but, instead of following in his father's footsteps, at the age of sixteen Conrad left his native land forever....This novel is considered to be one of Conrad's major works and is close in subject matter to The Secret Agent. It is full of cynicism and conflict about the historical failures of revolutionary movements and ideals. Conrad remarks in this book, as well as others, on the irrationality of life, the opacity of character, the unfairness with which suffering is inflicted upon the innocent and poor, and the careless disregard for the lives of those with whom we share existence. - Summary by Wikipedia

21Shadow-Line

By Joseph Conrad

Dedicated to the author's son who was wounded in World War 1, The Shadow-Line is a short novel based at sea by Joseph Conrad; it is one of his later works, being written from February to December 1915. It was first published in 1916 as a serial and in book form in 1917. The novella depicts the development of a young man upon taking a captaincy in the Orient, with the shadow line of the title representing the threshold of this development. The novella is notable for its dual narrative structure. The full, subtitled title of the novel is The Shadow-Line, A Confession, which immediately alerts the reader to the retrospective nature of the novella. The ironic constructions following from the conflict between the 'young' protagonist (who is never named) and the 'old' drive much of the underlying points of the novella, namely the nature of wisdom, experience and maturity. Conrad also extensively uses irony by comparison in the work, with characters such as Captain Giles and the ship's 'factotum' Ransome used to emphasise strengths and weaknesses of the protagonist. The novella has often been cited as a metaphor of the First World War, given its timing and references to a long struggle, the importance of camaraderie, etc. This viewpoint may also be reinforced by the knowledge that Conrad's elder son, Borys, was wounded in the First World War. Others however see the novel as having a strong supernatural influence, referring to various plot-lines in the novella such as the 'ghost' of the previous captain potentially cursing the ship, and the madness of first mate Mr Burns. Conrad himself, however, denied this link in his 'Author's Note' (1920), claiming that although critics had attempted to show this link, "The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is." Summary by Wikipedia (edited by Expatriate)

22Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (Version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

The Secret Agent tells the story of Adolf and Winnie Verloc. He is a phony anarchist and agent provocateur of the title, and the plot centres around the terrible consequences for their family when he is pressured into planning a terrorist act. It also bleakly satirises early 20th Century anarchism and the operations of the police and intelligence forces, while being none too complimentary about the media and general public either. Summary by Cori Samuel.

23Inheritors

By Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford

The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story (1901) is a quasi-science fiction novel on which Ford Madox Ford and Joseph Conrad collaborated. It looks at society's mental evolution and what is gained and lost in the process. Written before the first World War, its themes of corruption and the effect of the 20th Century on British aristocracy appeared to predict history. In the novel, the metaphor of the "fourth dimension" is used to explain a societal shift from a generation of people who have traditional values of interdependence, being overtaken by a modern generation who believe in expediency, callously using political power to bring down the old order. - Summary by Wikipedia

24Heart of Darkness (version 3)

By Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness tells the story of an English seaman, Charles Marlow, who embarks on a voyage up the Congo River and into the African wilderness. He soon becomes obsessed with the success of an ivory trading commander, Kurtz. Little does he know, Kurtz has been consumed with darkness and has begun his descent into madness... Summary by cadastra.

25Rover

By Joseph Conrad

This is Joseph Conrad's last novel. Citizen Peyrol returns to his native France against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars. The arrival of young Lieutenant Real necessitates another mission of danger, patriotism and heroism from Peyrol. Summary by kathrinee

26Typhoon (version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

A seafaring novella in which those manning ships are pitted against the forces of nature. A typical Conrad exploration of human beings under emotional strain with the consequences for social and spiritual existence. - Summary by Anthony Ogus

27Secret Agent (Version 3)

By Joseph Conrad

Taking as his inspiration the historical accidental death by explosion of an anarchist outside the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park, London in 1894, Conrad tells the dark tale of Adolf Verloc, an indolent, double-dealing secret agent of a foreign government pressured into committing an act of "shocking senselessness" against astronomy, of all things. As the novel bleakly, but with occasional streaks of humour, sifts the hidden motives of London anarchists and revolutionaries, police and government officials, and indeed of Verloc and his own immediate family, nearly all emerge, in their own way, as secret agents of a kind, not quite who they purport to be. (Summary by Peter Dann)

28Arrow of Gold: A Story Between Two Notes

By Joseph Conrad

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. (Summary by Peter Dann)

29Nostromo (Version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

In Nostromo, Joseph Conrad has transformed an apocryphal anecdote about a sailor who got away with stealing a boat loaded with silver into a grandly panoramic, yet deeply unsettling, narrative that sees every conceivable type of political person — from the laughably oafish and brutal to various shades of the well-meaning — caught up in an episode of revolutionary upheaval in the fictional South American country of Costaguana. Who, if anyone, will emerge from this dreadful saga with a shred of dignity left intact? - Summary by Peter Dann

30End Of The Tether

By Joseph Conrad

At an age when he should, by rights, be embarking on a well-deserved and comfortable retirement, Captain Whalley, a sailor of the old school — and even, in a small way, a pioneer of the eastern maritime trade — finds himself forced by circumstance and his own sense of honour to bind himself to a three year contract of employment as captain of a tramp steamer whose owner is the steamer's own engineer, and a mean and surly gambling addict to boot. Even this challenging situation, however, soon proves to be the least of Captain Whalley's difficulties. (Summary by Peter Dann)

31Rescue

By Joseph Conrad

"The Rescue" is the third of Conrad's novels to feature Captain Tom Lingard, an independent buccaneer operating in the Malayan archipelago. Tom Lingard was probably based on the real-life William Lingard, a runaway from an English landed family who owned several ships and traded extensively (and perhaps illegally) around the Macassar Strait in the mid-nineteenth century. In this prequel to both "An Outcast of the Islands" and "Almayer's Folly", Tom Lingard, after several years of expensive preparation, is right on the verge of pulling off a noble plan to restore a tribal prince and princess to their rightful realm with the help of native allies through a show of force when he learns that a wealthy and arrogant Englishman has accidentally run his pleasure yacht aground right in the middle of his own proposed field of operations. The yacht owner refuses Lingard's pleas to leave his yacht for a few days to allow Lingard to carry out his plans, and matters soon get even stickier when a group of Lingard's notional 'allies' on shore capture the yacht's owner just as Lingard and the yacht owner's wife find they are falling in love. - Summary by Peter Dann

32Heart of Darkness (version 4)

By Joseph Conrad

In this powerful novella based on Joseph Conrad's own experiences in the Belgian Congo, Charles Marlow, an experienced seaman, tells a small group of friends about a profoundly disturbing episode in his life where he was employed by a large colonising enterprise to sail a tinpot steamer up a river into the heart of Africa with a view to bringing out an ivory trader who had gone rogue. Conrad biographer Maya Janasoff has argued that while Marlow's descriptions of Africans are crudely racist, the author binds this racist language with "a potentially radical suggestion. What made the difference between savagery and civilization, Conrad was saying, transcended skin color; it even transcended place. The issue for Conrad wasn’t that 'savages' were inhuman. It was that any human could be a savage." - Summary by Peter Dann

33Almayer's Folly (Version 3)

By Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was born in former Poland, spent part of his childhood exiled in Russia because of his father's Polish nationalist political activities, learned and read French early, and did not speak a word of English until his late teens. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that when Conrad came to write this, his first novel, it centred on the pain of having a contested sense of identity, the experience of having to choose, in the midst of argument and derision, whether one was really 'this or that'. The Almayer of the story is a morose and hapless trader of Dutch extraction, settled in shambolic poverty on a river in Borneo. He dreams of finding gold inland and taking his mixed-race daughter Nina triumphantly to the Netherlands, where neither of them has ever been. Nina and her strong-willed Filipina mother, however, prove to have quite different loyalties and a quite different plan — though this plan, in turn, soon appears to come unstuck. (Summary by Peter Dann)

La historia de El huésped secreto se abre con una minuciosa descripción del momento previo a la partida, del instante en que está por comenzar el viaje. El bar­co ha sido remolcado desde el puerto hasta la desem­bocadura del río Menam y desde allí, emprenderá el viaje cuando el viento se lo permita.<br><br>El narrador protagonista de esta historia se encuen­tra en el umbral de la próxima experiencia: todos los preparativos para zarpar ya se han realizado, todo está listo; pero todavía no se ha iniciado el viaje. Desde la primera persona, el capitán ofrece sus impresiones so­bre la situación. Indica con precisión la posición en la que se encuentra y lo que observa a derecha, a izquier­da y al volverse hacia atrás. Ese estado inicial de la tra­vesía es definido como una pausa, en la que la soledad, la inmovilidad, el silencio, el atardecer son los rasgos predominantes: (Summary by Phileas Fogg)

35Personal Record

By Joseph Conrad

Conrad began dictating the series of loose autobiographical sketches that would become 'A Personal Record' in 1911, when he was half way through writing 'Under Western Eyes'. His avowed aim was to give his readers a sense of 'the man behind the work', and he certainly succeeded in creating a vivid impression of the kind of Joseph Conrad he would have liked to have been seen as: a man capable of wry humour and self-deprecation, but a sober, serious man too, prepared to face life as he found it. While some of the moments Conrad recalls seem slight enough in themselves - a general's daughter barges into his room while he is writing the end of 'Nostromo'; he supervises the unloading of a pony for the real Almayer up a river in Borneo - his manner of interweaving various episodes, abruptly dropping one and leaping to another epoch of his life, interspersing all with reflections on life and his own art - all this is Conrad at his most engaging. (Summary by Peter Dann)

36Outcast of the Islands (Version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

This, Conrad's second, novel serves as an illuminating prequel of his first, 'Almayer's Folly', teasing out the origins of the factional tensions that are such a distinctive feature of the social life of the little settlement of Sambir, on the Pantai river in Borneo, that figure so prominently in its predecessor. The central plot has an almost mythic quality ('A foolish king has two sons who are deeply jealous of each other'), the role of the 'king' in this case being played by Captain Tom Lingard, a swashbuckling if somewhat simple-minded freebooter who for many years has meddled in political affairs in the Malacca Straits for reasons both opportunistic and altruistic, and who has occasionally taken on 'lost causes' as his own personal protégés out of mixture of vanity and genuine good-heartedness. Lingard has previously set up one such protégé, Kaspar Almayer, as his employee at an isolated trading station in Sambir. When he learns that another former protégé, Peter Willems, has disgraced himself in Macassar and is on the point of suicide, Lingard takes pity on him and whisks him away to stay with Almayer in Sambir. Almayer and Willems are mutually jealous and hostile, however, and Willems' response to being 'saved' by Lingard is to bite the hand that has fed him in an act of betrayal that shocks Lingard and triggers a devastating dénouement. Among its other qualities, the novel is notable for its frank, even-handed depiction of interracial suspicion and enmity, and for its glorious descriptions of the physical environment of Sambir, where most of the story takes place. (Summary by Peter Dann)

37Nigger of the "Narcissus" (Version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

Today, we're likely to react to the title of this novella, on whose 'sincerity of expression' Conrad was willing to stake his artisitic reputation, with visceral disgust. There is a sad irony in this, for Conrad's title originally alluded to a rather complex set of meanings, implying that, by virtue of our human nature, we all carry within the fragile vessel that is our idealised image of ourselves a darker being we find troubling, even despicable, but with whom we must eventually come to terms. Indeed, in the couse of this tale of a traumatic sea voyage from Bombay to London, Conrad suggests that in projecting their loathing of their own ambivalent feelings onto their (possibly dying) black shipmate James Wait, the crew of the Narcissus have considerable difficulty seeing the real James Wait behind their confused emotional reactions at all. The novella is remarkable for its knitting together of a stunningly well-realised physical drama involving an imperilled ship with a most discomforting psychodrama that draws in all twenty-six men who sail her. - Summary by Peter Dann

38Tales of Unrest (version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

A brave Malay chieftain suffers from a surprising vulnerability. After giving birth to a series of unfortunate children, a farmer's wife is determined to bear no more. A spoonful of sugar brings a neophyte ivory trader to a moment of Nietzschean self-realisation. A pompous ass discovers that his wife has run off with another man. Secluded in an eerie lagoon, a Malay carries a guilty secret in his heart. "Tales of Unrest" was the first volume of short fiction Joseph Conrad published in his own lifetime. While some of these tales evoke the settings of Conrad's earliest novels, others clearly anticipate elements of Conrad's subsequent masterworks "Heart of Darkness" and "The Secret Agent". - Summary by Peter Dann

39Lord Jim (version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

While it's not often described as such, "Lord Jim" can be viewed as a kind of love story whose real theme is the close bond which develops between an older and worldly-wise sea captain, Marlow, and a deeply troubled young sailor called Jim who, in the opening phase of the story, commits an act of reprehensible cowardice for which he is publicly shamed. While the novel's nominal focus rests squarely on Jim and his subsequent attempts to rebuild a sense of self-worth through his involvement in the life of a jungle community, we hear most of Jim's tale from the mouth of Marlow, who watches Jim's progress with the loving and respectful concern of a father overseeing the moral development of a wayward son. It's worth noting that the story of the fictional SS Patna, retold here, is closely based on true events. (Summary by Peter Dann)

40Youth (Version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

This short tale was first published in book form alongside 'Heart of Darkness' and 'The End of the Tether', the three tales representing youth, middle age and old age, respectively. One of Conrad's 'Marlow yarns', the story is based on the trouble-plagued, much-delayed and ultimately ill-fated voyage of the cargo vessel 'Palestine' (here, 'Judea') carrying coal from England to Bangkok in 1882-1883, on which Conrad served his first posting as second mate. The story is notable (and somewhat unusual, for Conrad) in the light-hearted buoyancy of the narrator's tone as he confronts difficulty after difficulty. (Summary by Peter Dann)

An impossibly imperturbable old sea captain, with two hundred Chinese labourers aboard his steamship, faces a terrifying typhoon for the first time in his life. When emigré Austrian peasant Yanko is washed up on an English beach, he encounters widespread hostility from the local people on account of his foreign ways, and only in time earns a meagre measure of grudging respect. Captain Falk — seemingly half man, half tug boat - desperately loves a shapely young woman, but standing in the way of any possible match is a most delicate question indeed. A young woman compelled to care for her blind father caringly refrains, over a period of years, from disillusioning crusty old Captain Hagberd, her landlord and immediate neighbour, when he maintains adamantly that his long-lost son, a sailor, will return imminently, and will naturally want to marry her. Conrad's short fiction is often lighter than his novels. With the exception of Yanko's tale ("Amy Foster"), these beautifully crafted, eminently readable stories tend to strike a sardonic, rather than a tragic, note. (Summary by Peter Dann)

42Mirror of the Sea (Version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

"Here speaks the man of masts and sails, to whom the sea is not a navigable element, but an intimate companion. The length of passages, the growing sense of solitude, the close dependence upon the very forces that, friendly to-day, without changing their nature, by the mere putting forth of their might, become dangerous to-morrow, make for that sense of fellowship which modern seamen, good men as they are, cannot hope to know." In this volume of essays, more than in any other single work, we get to see clearly just what Joseph Conrad's years working on sail-powered ships meant to him — and they certainly meant a great deal to him, for all Conrad's subsequent fretting that he might be typed as "only" a writer of the sea. This collection is particularly renowned for the lengthy episode titled "The Tremolino", where Conrad gives us, in the character of the real-world Dominic, the model of his fictional Nostromo, as well as an account of personalities and gun-running activities he would later depict in "The Arrow of Gold". (Summary by Peter Dann)

43Set of Six

By Joseph Conrad

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. In "The Brute", we are asked whether we can believe there could be such a thing as a positively malevolent ship, while "An Anarchist" introduces us to an unfortunate man who has had a vision of society itself as malevolent and has not been able to rest in peace ever since. "The Duel", the most obviously likeable tale in this collection, recounts the history of an unfortunate feud between two officers of Napoleon's army that caused them to fight a series of duels over many years. "Il Conde" rounds out the collection, giving a new twist to the saying "See Naples and die". (Summary by Peter Dann)

44Under Western Eyes (version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

"But it is a vain enterprise for sophisticated Europe to try and understand these doings." Set in St Petersburg and Geneva, this austere and claustrophobic psycho-political tragedy focusses on the terrible plight of Razumov, a bright young student without family ties whose chance to live his own life is snatched from him the moment a fellow student takes refuge in his room after helping assassinate a Russian statesman. Razumov's profound sense of grief and bitterness at the cruel logic of his predicament may well reflect Conrad's own reaction to having his childhood and early teen years stolen from him, cruelly subsumed by the disastrous consequences of his Polish parents' resistance to Russian brutality and domination. (Summary by Peter Dann)

45'Twixt Land and Sea

By Joseph Conrad

While the central figures in each of the three stories in this collection are sailing captains, the main action in two of them takes place on land, albeit in sight of the sea. In "A Smile of Fortune", a naive young sea captain falls into grave moral peril when he locks horns with a wily ship chandler in Mauritius. In "The Secret Sharer", a newly appointed sea captain is confronted with an altogether different kind of challenge when he attempts to haul in a rope ladder over his ship's side one evening and finds it much heavier than usual. In "Freya of the Seven Isles", Jasper Allen, the captain of a lovely little brig, floats on a cloud of love, expecting soon to marry Freya, the daughter of an East Indies plantation owner, and not taking seriously the pretentions of an older Dutch naval officer who sees himself as Jasper's rival. The depth of psychological insight in these stories is variable, but each is a gripping and suspenseful example of Conrad's magazine fiction in the years immediately preceding the Great War. (Summary by Peter Dann)

46Chance (version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

"You are the expert in the psychological wilderness," the nominal narrator of this engaging tale says at one point to Marlow, who in practice serves as this novel's chief discoverer of hidden events, and commentator on the vagaries of human behaviour. In "Chance", these are notable chiefly in the actions of various parties — some well-meaning, some blinded by their own lofty idealism, and others frankly exploitative — who in various ways meddle in the fate of Flora de Barrall, an innocent young woman who just happens to be the only child of a fascinatingly bland and self-deluded fraudster who proves to be a very nasty piece of work indeed. Marlow's ruminations on the actions of the various players whose paths cross Flora's are always dry, and often very droll. 'Chance' was Conrad's first truly popular novel, and even today it's not hard to see why. This is Conrad at his most accessible. - Summary by Peter Dann

47Within The Tides

By Joseph Conrad

A self-important English philosopher and his haughty, beautiful daughter sail to the South Pacific in hope of locating the daughter's wrongly accused fiancée and rehabilitating his reputation. An evasive silk planter who may have met the man in question has other plans, however, for the beautiful, if dangerously vapid, daughter. A patent medicine salesman goes into partnership with an honest but financially troubled ship owner. What could go possibly wrong? During the Napoleonic era, a young British naval officer has a terrifying encounter involving a bed in Spain in which an Archbishop has once slept. The kind-hearted captain of a small steamer in the Far East undertakes a voyage to collect silver dollars being withdrawn from circulation from various trading stations, but runs up against three vicious rogues, one without hands, who have their own ideas about where those dollars belong. Even the greatest authors have to pay their bills — and these four stories, originally published in magazines, would appear to show Conrad writing very much in a bill-paying frame of mind. (Summary by Peter Dann)

48Victory (Version 2)

By Joseph Conrad

After spending some years wandering about the East and engaging in various adventures, Axel Heyst, a man of independent means who feels little sense of attachment to the world, retreats to a tropical island, where he lives in virtual isolation, accompanied only by his books. Complications arise when, on a rare trip back to civilization, Heyst encounters a young lady musician who is being pursued by the lustful hotel keeper and notorious gossip Schomberg. Before long, Axel Heyst is faced with the realization that the demands of the world on a man who would simply be left alone cannot be so easily side-stepped. (Summary by Peter Dann)

The first of three collaborations between Conrad and Ford. On the verge of being found out in a matter of breach of fiduciary trust and financial scandal, the anonymous narrator contemplates suicide in a series of letters to his beloved.

50Romance

By Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford

Second of three collaborations between Conrad and Ford. The hero and narrator, John Kemp, gets involved with smugglers, Caribbean pirates, Irish rebels, prison, treachery,, and--need I add?--romance.