The End of the Tether: and Other Stories

'(Conrad) thought of civilised and morally tolerable human life as a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled lava which at any moment might break and let the unwary sink into fiery depths'
- Bertrand Russell

This selection of four tales by Conrad is about radical insecurity: lone human beings involuntarily forced into confrontation with a terrifying universe in which they can never be wholly at home. It leads with 'The End of the Tether' and includes also ' The Duel', ' The Return', ...