Heart of Darkness (Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classics)

by Joseph Conrad

Overview

A masterpiece of twentieth-century writing, Heart of Darkness (1902) exposes the tenuous fabric that holds "civilization" together and the brutal horror at the center of European colonialism. Conrad's crowning achievement recounts Marlow's physical and psychological journey deep into the heart of the Belgian Congo in search of the mysterious trader Kurtz.

Joyce Carol Oates on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness:

Heart of Darkness has had an influence that goes beyond the specifically literary. This parable of a man's 'heart of darkness' dramatized in the alleged 'Dark Continent' of Africa transcended its late Victorian era to acquire the stature of one of the great, if troubling, visionary works of western civilization."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580495752
Publisher:	Prestwick House, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/28/2004
Series:	Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classics
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	76
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Best known for his novella Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was a Polish–British author. Although not a native English speaker, Conrad came to be regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. He revolutionized the English novel with books such as The Secret Agent, Nostromo, and Typhoon. Before publishing his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1895, Joseph Conrad spent almost 20 years working mostly at sea as a merchant sailor.

Date of Birth:

December 3, 1857

Date of Death:

August 3, 1924

Place of Birth:

Berdiczew, Podolia, Russia

Place of Death:

Bishopsbourne, Kent, England

Education:

Tutored in Switzerland. Self-taught in classical literature. Attended maritime school in Marseilles, France

Table of Contents

With an Introduction by Caryl Phillips and commentary by H.L. Mencken, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Lionel Trilling, Chiua Achebe, and Philip Gourevitch

Heart of Darkness, which appeared at the very beginning of our century, was a Cassandra cry announcing the end of Victorian Europe, on the verge of transforming itself into the Europe of violence," wrote the critic Czeslaw Milosz.

Originally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century's most enduring--and harrowing--works of fiction. Written several years after Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel tells the story of Marlow, a seaman who undertakes his own journey into the African jungle to find the tormented white trader Kurtz. Rich in irony and spellbinding prose, Heart of Darkness is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity.

This edition contains selections from Conrad's Congo Diary of 1890--the first notes, in effect, for the novel which was composed at the end of that decade. Virginia Woolf wrote of Conrad, "His books are full of moments of vision. They light up a whole character in a flash. . . . He could not write badly, one feels, to save his life."

What People are Saying About This

Joyce Carol Oates

One of the great, if troubling, visionary works of Western civilization.