Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjuz̪ɛf ˌkɔn.rad]; born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-British writer^[1] regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language.^[2] He joined the British merchant marine in 1878, and was granted British citizenship in 1886. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature.^{[note 1]} He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an impassive, inscrutable universe.^{[note 2]}

Conrad is considered an early modernist, though his works still contain elements of 19th-century realism.^[3] His narrative style and anti-heroic characters^[4] have influenced many authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald,^[5] William Faulkner,^[5] Ernest Hemingway,^[6] André Malraux,^[7] George Orwell,^[8]:254 Graham Greene,^[5] Gabriel García Márquez,^[5]John le Carré,^[5] V. S. Naipaul,^[5] Philip Roth,^[9] J. M. Coetzee,^[5] and Salman Rushdie.^[10] Many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, Conrad's works.

Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew on, among other things, his native Poland's national experiences^{[note 3]} and his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world—including imperialism and colonialism—and that profoundly explore the human psyche.

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Charles Marlow.^[1] Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames, London, England. This setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his obsession with the ivory trader Kurtz, which enables Conrad to create a parallel between London and Africa as places of darkness.^[2]

Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between so-called civilised people and those described as savages; Heart of Darkness raises questions about imperialism and racism.^[3]

Originally issued as a three-part serial story in Blackwood's Magazine to celebrate the thousandth edition of the magazine,^[4] Heart of Darkness has been widely re-published and translated into many languages. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness sixty-seventh on their list of the hundred best novels in English of the twentieth century.^]