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Nostromo

Joseph Conrad

3.82 · Rating details · 15,592 ratings · 669 reviews

A gripping tale of capitalist exploitation and rebellion, set amid the mist-shrouded mountains of a fictional South American republic, employs flashbacks and glimpses of the future to depict the lure of silver and its effects on men. Conrad's deeply moral consciousness and masterful narrative technique are at their best in this, one of his finest works.

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Paperback, 336 pages

Published December 31st 2002 by Dover Thrift Editions (first published 1904)

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Jun 20, 2020 Glenn Russell added it · review of another edition

Nostromo by Joseph Conrad is a true classic, one of the greatest English language novels ever written.

Not far into the tale, I came across these lines about a silver mine owned by one Charles Gould, a proper Englishman by ancestry and disposition, a gent who lives with his wife in a mansion inherited from his father located in Conrad's fictional country of Costaguana in the northwest quadrant of South America, a country sharing much geography with real-life Colombia:

"Mrs Gould knew the history ...more

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Mar 14, 2013 Lyn rated it really liked it

Nostromo, Joseph Conrad’s South American novel reminds me somehow of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, perhaps the setting of mines in South America.

The underlying political ideologies are also reminiscent to some extent on Rand’s objectivism, and both author’s guileless mistrust of democracy ambles towards, but never wholly approaches, a Nietzschean ideal. In this aspect, Nostromo “the incorruptible” can be compared and contrasted with Kurtz, Conrad's archetypal villain from Heart of Darkness. Wherea ...more

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Nov 07, 2018 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Joseph Conrad, who knew the human nature inside out, telling the story of Nostromo and portraying his personages is ironic and even slightly derisive…
Every man, somewhere deep inside, has his own share of rascality… And every human doing has two sides…

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the Fates.

The events take place in the South American country of Costaguana, which is ...more

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Apr 07, 2017 Steven Godin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classic-fiction, great-britain

Between 1902 and the year of its publication (1904), Joseph Conrad was caught in an abyss of depression, financial collapse and severe gout, but somehow still managed to write what is a deep and adventurous novel, albeit a dark one. Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, was originally planned as a short-story but was to become his longest work, with the composition it would lead him to say "I see nothing, I read nothing. It is like a kind of tomb which is also hell where one must write, write, write Between 1902 and the year of its publication (1904), Joseph Conrad was caught in an abyss of depression, financial collapse and severe gout, but somehow still managed to write what is a deep and adventurous novel, albeit a dark one. Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, was originally planned as a short-story but was to become his longest work, with the composition it would lead him to say "I see nothing, I read nothing. It is like a kind of tomb which is also hell where one must write, write, write.". Nostromo was received poorly back in the day, a product not so much of its characters or their complexities, but of the plotting. It's no doubt a well oiled machine, but is overwhelmed by too many pieces. I can say it took well over a hundred pages too finally grasp hold of it's difficult narrative, but even after the final sentences, was still left pondering, just how on earth do I rate this?

Set in the fictional Latin American country of Costaguana, and a silver mine, the novel has so much going on, but simple put is based around one thing, a crisis. A crisis by which the province passes from the chaos of post-colonial misrule to the unquiet prosperity of Anglo-American imperial capitalism. Two key men are important to the story, Nostromo himself, the trusted boss of European laborers, and Martin Decoud, a shady journalist working for an even more shady government, who's aim is to smuggle a last shipment of silver out of the Occidental Province and thus ensure continued American financial backing.

Of course this failed, leading to almost total chaos.

The country simmers in the sweltering heat, with labor troubles, Catholic priests going to war with American Protestant evangelists, factions clamoring for the invasion of Costaguana and the majority of characters either killed off, or left physically and mentally damaged.
Decoud and Nostromo, like the book itself, are engaged through the first half of their stories in discovering the flaws and corruption of their society, and there is certainly a lot of that!.
I could never take sides, didn't trust anyone, and didn't really like anyone either.
Most of what goes on is, to put it bluntly, ruthless.

Politically, this is a serious work, and just goes to show what can happen when the people you think are in charge, are just as much the scoundrels as the scoundrels themselves. And yet the novel somehow presents that actions are taken admirably, and with morel. I can understand the determination of each and every character, even though I couldn't really care less of the consequences. Through backstory, historical facts on the region, flashbacks and anachrony, Conrad's stylistic innovation gives the reader plenty, and I mean plenty, to chew on.
His lavish storytelling on civilization and social conventions is so well done, it has me thinking of him wondering around south America with map and compass looking for some inspiration.
And that's why in the end Nostromo was worthy of four stars. As somewhere in there is an adventure story, just without any real hero's. It's no Moby Dick, or Robinson Crusoe, but does walk the same path, just in a darker and more complex way.

Nostromo on the whole may be a difficult, unconventional novel, and in anyone else's hands, might not have worked. If F. Scott Fitzgerald really did say “I’d rather have written Conrad’s Nostromo than any other novel”, then I'm glad he didn't, as it's just not a Fitzgerald type novel in any way shape or form. ...more

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Jun 25, 2011 Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition

Shelves: latin-america, 20th-century, novel

no...there is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests. They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and it is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principle (p423)

On the reread I feel that this unrelentingly bleak novel is the novel of the twentieth century, at least for a fair proportion of the population of the world, this could be the country of Heart of Darkness once it had no...there is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests. They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and it is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principle (p423)

On the reread I feel that this unrelentingly bleak novel is the novel of the twentieth century, at least for a fair proportion of the population of the world, this could be the country of Heart of Darkness once it had achieved 'independence' or it could be One Hundred years of solitude but told with earnestness and without optimism. As a student in class, we were given a cartoon strip version of animal farm, this differed in one way from the original - at the end instead of simply observing how the pigs and the men became indistinguishable - the animals rise up in revolt through the whole bunch out and restart the cycle with a different species promoted to the leadership of the free world..

The most striking feature of the text is that Conrad gets bored with a conventional linear narrative and chops it up in different ways. Events in the few few pages are revisited from a different perspective, towards the middle of the book and towards the end Conrad tells the political ending through flashback, the reader must infer some detail and make allowance for the peculiarities of the specific narrative voices in each case. An effect of this is to suggest that the detail is irrelevant, the big story about the country of Bird shit coast, so I loosely render Costaguana into English, is about international interests, structures and habits of power, ultimately avarice wins and while avarice is unlikely to take your confession with a cigarette drooping out of the corner of its mouth before you are dragged out and shot, it is violent and destructive enough in its own way, trumping here with ease the nineteenth century ideal of nationalism and patriotism with the simple logic that if you have enough money or more accurately access to international credit you can buy the most modern guns and make your own country -all you need do then is invent a new flag. There is a vision of the silver rich mine: She saw the San Tome mountain hanging over the campo, over the whole land, feared, hated, wealthy; more soulless than any tyrant, more pitiless and autocratic than the worst government; ready to crush innumerable lives in the expansion of its greatness (p.431). The archbishop advises his flock to think on eternal suffering, which in the context of the history of the Bird shit coast seems unnecessary advice - but he himself is infected with the same avarice in the form of desire for the restitution of the landed wealth of the church. One might wonder about politic,s but from early on we are shown that the political ideals that had half starved, near naked men fight and win armed with knives tied to sticks in the service of Garibaldi for a united Italy are out manoeuvred by Cavour, the only relief is that money can wash away the incipient proto-fascism of the admirers of Napoleon III too. Love also seems coloured by wealth, Nostromo's relationship with his designated wife demonstrated by gifting her the silver buttons off his jacket as something of sufficient value to her. Dr Monygham loves Mrs Gould, but his love is a kind of injury, felt as pain and a feeling he can only appreciate because of the experiences that have left him with PTSD.

The shadow of de Tocqueville's opinion that all new regimes are built out of the bricks of the preceding one hangs over the narrative, escape from patterns and socialisation into violence, coercion and extortion is not to be found here. one of the few positive seeming characters is a bandit leader (and later minister of war), perhaps Hobsbawn's idea of social banditry was drawn more from this and memories of Robin Hood than from more conventional historical research.

One thread in the fabric of the twentieth century has been to hold men like Charles Gould up as heroes, but for Conrad, he is an adventurer - a member of a foreign legion, essentially alien and uncaringly destructive for all his claim of having been born 'here' implies some kind of kinship with the other citizens.

In short this novel is like a great bird that loosened its bowls across ideals of the nineteenth century, the vigorous splatter of which reveals the pattern of the twentieth century perhaps for all of us, since the banks must make their five percent, and to borrow their money you must meet their conditions what ever your own values.

I wonder having finished what Conrad might have made of the prospects of independent Poland, on the strength of this novel, I suspect he'd have felt no excess of optimism.

(view spoiler) ...more

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Jun 27, 2011 Steve rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, favorites

Nostromo is considered by many to be Conrad’s greatest novel. The ambiguous nature of good and evil, the importance of duty, common themes in all of Conrad’s novels, get an epic treatment in Nostromo (my Modern Library edition is 630 pages long). But for all of its length, the novel, after the first dense, foundation building 50 pages or so, reads quickly. Published in 1904, the book has the feel of a modern novel. It’s a book about revolutions, money, and character, told through different voice Nostromo is considered by many to be Conrad’s greatest novel. The ambiguous nature of good and evil, the importance of duty, common themes in all of Conrad’s novels, get an epic treatment in Nostromo (my Modern Library edition is 630 pages long). But for all of its length, the novel, after the first dense, foundation building 50 pages or so, reads quickly. Published in 1904, the book has the feel of a modern novel. It’s a book about revolutions, money, and character, told through different voices, different eyes.

The main character is of course Nostromo, though the reader may at first be a bit puzzled by this, since for well over half the book Nostromo, a sailor and dock foreman, exists on the periphery of the story, but always as the “indispensible man.” If anything, the main character is, initially, the San Tome silver mine, a storehouse of wealth in the imaginary South American country of “Costaguana.” Charles Gould is the owner of the mine. He has inherited it from his father, but the mine is both a political football and silver goose due to the country’s never ending revolutions. (So much so that Gould’s uncle was executed by the previous junta.) Gould has no intention of ever letting that happen again, so he takes a different approach, inviting outside investors (American, and others) to get the mine running again, with a backup plan that involves a lot of dynamite. With a new, liberal government in place, it looks like everyone is making money.

Not so, as one resentful general feels he isn’t getting his fair share. Yet another revolution occurs, and the province of Sulaco (the richest in the country) falls under siege. Fortunately Sulaco is protected by its geography, and what follows is a race against time, with several factions vying for control of the country – and the silver. The cast of characters Conrad uses to tell his story seems vast, but the individual treatment is never shallow. Oh, some (most?) of the characters are shallow, depressingly so. Generals, sailors, crazy priests, revolutionaries, nihilists, bandits, women of various natures, are all revealed in their damaged glory. Gould himself, not really good or evil, is a mechanical man, a total materialist, who, oddly, is married to a secular saint of sorts, Emilia. There were times I wondered about this odd match, but in the end I figured Charles represented the ultimate project for Emilia. The result is a sterile standoff.

And then there’s Nostromo, a confident guy who on surface would seem the perfect Conradian hero. He gets the job done, whatever it is, always. However, the problem in Nostromo’s case is that it is always linked to how he feels he is viewed by others – especially his employers. His reputation is paramount. When the social order collapses, he feels “betrayed” by it (or “them”). But much of this is self-serving. When, through an accident, fate pushes the silver into his lap, he makes the wrong choice, and that choice eats at him throughout the rest of the novel, compounding itself into multiple bad choices, with the final, fatal choice linked to love. Some have complained about the late love story in the novel. For me it fittingly closed the circle, and is as heartbreaking an ending as I’ve read in literature. It’s a sad story told by a master.
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Dec 29, 2016 Perry rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: libri-classici

" He was ruined in every way, but a man possessed of passion is not a bankrupt in life. " J. Conrad, Nostromo

A splendid story of romanticism, adventure and vice. Conrad employs an intricate narrative structure, intertwining four character studies and differing points of view around Sulaco, an imagined South American country, a ticking bomb with a violent past. He perfectly contrasts these against the fabulous scenery of mist-hidden mountains and a silver mine.

The novel begins in the midst of ...more

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May 19, 2017 Michael rated it liked it

Shelves: mining, south-america, 1001-books, colonialism

This is a character study of Europeans remaking themselves in the New World, in this case the fictional South American country of Costaguana. As in other books by this master that I’ve enjoyed over the decades (Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Sharer), I enjoyed the collision of the characters’ sense of noble purpose and the reality of corruption and self-interest that forever infests human enterprise. On the plus side, we delve into the minds and struggles of a larger cast of characters This is a character study of Europeans remaking themselves in the New World, in this case the fictional South American country of Costaguana. As in other books by this master that I’ve enjoyed over the decades (Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Sharer), I enjoyed the collision of the characters’ sense of noble purpose and the reality of corruption and self-interest that forever infests human enterprise. On the plus side, we delve into the minds and struggles of a larger cast of characters than in Conrad’s more famous works. The flip side of that is a diffusion of focus and a long traverse getting to know them before significant events occur that converge their pathways and challenge them to change their ways or fall by the wayside. In other words, the tale can try your patience a bit waiting for people to get unstuck in their ways.

The modernist elements in the writing that impressed me for a book published in 1904 include hopping among the perspectives of several key characters, with some interludes with an omniscient narrator and some playing with linearity in the timeframe. Two important characters we mainly come to know as reflected indirectly from the mindset of other characters, mine owner Charles Gould and his captain of the company’s security forces, Nostromo, whom we are told was a former guerrilla fighter with Garibaldi’s revolt in Italy and a merchant marine foreman after that.

Gould is the inheritor of a silver mining concession from his wealthy British ancestors, who were more into the shipping business of their steamship fleet than the big challenges of mining. While the Spanish for three centuries made treasures from the mine through brutal employment of slave labor and coerced labor, Gould applies his engineering training to make a more efficient and humane operation. Thus, the people mostly love him, and the provincial government and local businesses appreciate the boon to the economy. For a long time, income from the concession keeps the line of dictators at the distant capitol relatively happy through payment on the development investment they forced on him and ongoing bribes. However, the prospect of a successful revolutionary coup brings such stability to an end. With the fear of rebel insurgents taking the town, the peasants react by rioting and assaults on the homes and businesses of the upper classes. The hopes for the town and company in Nostromo’s competence in their defense is founded on a past success by him in heroically warding off a mob attack on one of the company’s boats trying evacuate company employees.

Conrad gives us a window on these two characters from the residents of the town Sulaco, including the viewpoints of Gould’s charming wife Emilia, who is tough in her own way but sincere in her charity; the cynical English doctor Monygham, whose torture by an earlier dictator leaves him wishing for a republic; the mine manager Joseph Mitchell, a fussy but efficient Brit promoted from a long tour as steamship captain; the progressive journalist Martin Decoud, who acquired European culture from his education in France; the virtuous local aristocrat Don Jose Avellanos and his wife Antonia; and Giorgio Viola, a merchant who also fought with Garibaldi and father of two daughters who come to captivate Nostromo. We come to wonder how noble Gould and Nostromo really are. The disparity between the luxury Gould lives in and the impoverished status of the town’s majority is obvious. In the case of Nostomo, some of his comments suggest a chafing in his soul from resentment of being exploited without suitable reward. Is the whole enterprise of extracting riches from this land doomed to the forces of corruption and excesses inherent with all colonial endeavors? All in Conrad’s cast of characters are forced to decide whether they should support capitulation to the new warlords or instead gamble on desperate resistance and a chance of making an independent republic out of their province. Regardless of who ends up in power, there is the thorny problem of keeping the large quantity of silver ingots not yet shipped out to buyers from being snatched by individuals from either side with their own greed in mind.

Conrad sold this story in serial form for a magazine. To satisfy such readers, he pulls off some great surprises for the ending. Along the way, his well-developed characters each undergo significant development to make the necessary choices to adapt and survive the treacherous events of the tale. Some rise to the occasion to make a moral stance, some get their just deserts, some get undeserved rewards, and some tragically pay with their lives. I admire the book, but overall my personal pleasure meter didn’t often reach high on the dial due to so many diversions among the characters. I was most moved when the prose suddenly lept off the page with some eloquent description of geography or insight into reality by his characters. Here is a small sample of his marvelous crafting of the English language despite growing up in Poland:

Don Jose Avellanos depended very much upon the devotion of his beloved Antonia. He accepted it in the benighted way of men, who, though made in God's image, are like stone idols without sense before the smoke of certain burnt offerings.”

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the Fates.”

There is never any God in a country where men will not help themselves. ...more

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Aug 21, 2017 Alex rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2017

Wait a minute, is this what Joseph Conrad is? I thought maybe I'd read The Secret Agent at the wrong time, because I felt like I should like it but I sortof didn't. I tell people I liked Heart of Darkness, but there's this vague air of uneasiness that I can't quite put my finger on: I've read it three times but I don't really remember it. And here I am at Nostromo, which is about a revolution! And secret treasure! This is exciting! And here's the thing: it fucking isn't. Here's Joseph Conrad's d ...more

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Mar 06, 2011 Darwin8u rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, aere-perennius, 100-modern-library

An almost perfect Novel. I can't think of but a handful of writers (Dostoevsky, Kafka, Melville) who have written a better book. ...more

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Sep 30, 2014 Czarny Pies rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Readers who are already deep into the Conrad catalogue

Recommended to Czarny by: Prof. Hughes put it on a modern novel course that I took.

Shelves: english-lit

Nostromo is a very fine book and a great pleasure to read. The first reason is that if you are interested in hearing the opinions of their favourite authors and in Nostromo certainly has a lot of things to say about very many topics. Second, many people are fascinated by Conrad's analysis of United States as an Imperial Power in Latin America.

Unfortunatley, because of Nostromo's good qualities it often makes it way onto to undergraduate course lists where it does not belong. In order to air his ...more

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Jul 14, 2008 Dale rated it really liked it

Shelves: adventure, fiction, favorites, latin-america

Nostromo was a difficult read for me. I started this book many years ago and gave up after the first 50 pages. This time I plowed through, and I'm glad I did. There's a lot of depth to this novel, but you don't see it until about halfway in.

The story takes place in a fictional South American country called Costaguana at the turn of the 20th century. An Englishman named Charles Gould has inherited a ruined mining concession, and undertakes to restore it, mostly as a means of sticking a thumb in t Nostromo was a difficult read for me. I started this book many years ago and gave up after the first 50 pages. This time I plowed through, and I'm glad I did. There's a lot of depth to this novel, but you don't see it until about halfway in.

The story takes place in a fictional South American country called Costaguana at the turn of the 20th century. An Englishman named Charles Gould has inherited a ruined mining concession, and undertakes to restore it, mostly as a means of sticking a thumb in the eye of the corrupt Costaguana government that caused the ruin of the mine, and the ruin of Gould's father. The title character, Nostromo, is an Italian sailor named Gian' Battista Fidanza, who works as the cargo manager at the port of Sulaco, the city where the action takes place. He is a man of nearly superhuman ability and moral courage, seen as indispensable by the European owners and managers in Sulaco. Despite his great value, his financial rewards are few.

The Gould mining concession is an irresistible prize for the Costaguana government. A few generals stage a military coup, claiming to be democrats and men of the people, with the aim of seizing the mine's wealth. Charles Gould will have none of it, and would rather destroy the mine than have it fall into the hands of the brigands who are coming to seize it.

So at one level the novel addresses issues of colonialism, and in a way that I'm not too happy about. The locals are characterized as thieves, lazy, indigent, greasy, unkempt, venal, crude, and so on, while the Europeans are, for the most part, depicted as idealistic, selfless, beleaguered, and enlightened. But, as always with Conrad, the picture is not quite so cut and dried. Nostromo, and his would-be adopted father Giorgio Viola, an ex captain in the army of Garibaldi, a dedicated republican (in the old sense meaning in favor of liberty), see the Europeans as the exploiters that they are - of course, they themselves are European, but have a moral and philosophical bias towards the downtrodden. And the Europeans themselves are shown to be obsessed by their need to extract the maximum wealth from the country, while treating the local people as mere means towards that end.

The real interest of the novel is in its psychological portraits of the principal characters. Conrad is comfortable with complexity of character, and his characters are never paper cutouts - each one of the major characters in this novel have conflicting desires, and the novel is in some ways a working out of those internal conflicts. Actually there is one exception to this: Captain Mitchell, the local agent for the main shipping company in Sulaco, is a completely self unaware person, who fancies himself a person of deep perception and great courage, but possessing neither. He serves as a kind of quasi-comic foil to the real players: Nostromo, Charles Gould and his wife Emily, Martin Decoud, Giorgio Viola and his wife and daughters, and Dr. Monygham.

This is a novel very well worth reading. Conrad stands out amongst authors of his era for the way that he embraces psychological and social ambiguity. He was a modern writer in that sense, and a realist.

...more

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Mar 11, 2011 Jill rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

I've tried. I really have. But after one short story (The Secret Sharer) and four novels (Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent, Lord Jim and now, Nostromo), I've come to the considered conclusion that I really don't appreciate Conrad. I admire him for his prodigious output, especially since he's a non-native English speaker who only learned to speak the language fluently when he was in his 20s (and even then, reportedly with a strong Polish accent). But with perhaps the exception of The Secret Ag ...more

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Feb 13, 2008 Matt rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classic-literature, best-of-the-best

Conrad is cynical, in the best sense of that word. Lord Jim was one of my favorite books, and Nostromo is probably even better. Although it is difficult to become acquainted with the characters at first, the reader cannot help but understand them in a profound way by the end. Conrad's worldview is disturbing but also compelling, as he uses character, symbolism, and allegory to tell a realistic story with an abundance of lessons. ...more

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May 03, 2015 Mike rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Mike by: John King

Shelves: favorites, latin-america

Nostromo begins with a legend. The story goes, among some of the people of Conrad’s republic of Costaguana, that two wandering sailors- “Americanos, perhaps, but gringos of some sort for certain”- persuade a local man to take them out across the Gulfo Placido to a desolate, inhospitable peninsula, where the locals believe there is gold. “The poor, associating by an obscure instinct of consolation the ideas of evil and wealth”, believe the peninsula to be cursed. On the second evening after the s ...more

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May 12, 2016 Roger Brunyate rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: latin-america, top-reviews

A Wonderful Book to Have Read

The tense of my title is deliberate. Virginia Woolf described Nostromo as "a difficult book to read through." A Conrad biographer called it "a novel that one cannot read unless one has read it before." I take both these verdicts from the excellent introduction to the Barnes and Noble edition by Brent Hayes Edwards, and they come as some relief. I generally find that introductory essays give away too many plot points, and this is no exception. But having read a little A Wonderful Book to Have Read

The tense of my title is deliberate. Virginia Woolf described Nostromo as "a difficult book to read through." A Conrad biographer called it "a novel that one cannot read unless one has read it before." I take both these verdicts from the excellent introduction to the Barnes and Noble edition by Brent Hayes Edwards, and they come as some relief. I generally find that introductory essays give away too many plot points, and this is no exception. But having read a little over half the novel without it, I was desperate for some help.

It was not just me. Conrad really does jump all over the place in time, telling the story first from one angle then another. His characters really do play on a half-lighted stage where nobody is quite as they seem, apparent power may vanish in smoke, and some of the most significant events occur in the wings. Early though this is (1904), it marks a distinct break from the late Victorian novel, coming closer to Woolf or even to Faulkner. Its exotic setting, political theme, and moral concerns look forward to Hemingway and Greene, though without their directness of narrative. Conrad's layered chronology, and not just his Latin American locale, more than once had me thinking forward to Gabriel García Márquez. While I might have fallen into the rhythm of the narrative eventually, Edwards' essay helped me put the novel into a modernist context, so I could take the rapid shifts in viewpoint in my stride and not be fazed when Conrad does something extraordinary like jumping a decade into the speculative future.

Conrad's own landfalls in South America as a Polish seaman aboard a British ship were brief, and apparently left little impression; he had to call upon others for help with the setting. All the same, it is amazingly well realized, with detail and atmosphere that convince me, even with my rather longer visits to those parts. His invented country of Costaguana might be anywhere between Costa Rica and Guyana, as the introduction remarks. The specific locale is the port of Sulaco, the San Tomé silver mine in the mountains above, and the surrounding region, isolated from the rest and known as the Occidental Province. When yet another revolution breaks out in the country, the province, protected by its mountains, attempts to secede. You might think of Panama seceding from Colombia in 1903, except that Conrad rearranges his geography to suit his story; this is not history under a pseudonym. It is an unstable country, with new regimes replacing each other more or less violently every few years.

Most of the major characters, though, are of European origin and outlook: Charles Gould, the English owner of the mine, and his recent bride Emilia; Don José Avellanos, the former ambassador, of pure Spanish descent, and his lovely niece Antonia; Martin Decoud, Antonia's admirer, who is introduced as a Parisian flâneur, but becomes a political activist in his own right; Monygham, the embittered Irish doctor; and the title character, Nostromo, an Italian seaman who has earned universal respect as the man who can be trusted to get things done. The name means "bosun" in Italian, but is also a contraction of "nostr'uomo," or "our man." Though a secondary character until quite near the end, he may be the moral touchstone of the story, but even he is not entirely as people see him. Conrad is not primarily a novelist of personal relationships; his characters tend to be seen as individuals reacting to the ethical or political situation around them, often in surprising ways.

Nostromo is not a denunciation of colonialism, as Heart of Darkness (1899) had been. Those battles are over; Costaguana has gained its independence. But not its stability, and most of the settlers who, like the Gould family, have been there for generations, are anything but settled. It is one of the earliest novels to explore the post-colonial age, and in some respects it goes even further than that. In the barely glimpsed but distantly present American industrialist Holroyd, who funds the mine from his stronghold in San Francisco as the first step towards establishing a North American foothold in the region (and even promoting his particular brand of Christianity), we see distinct pre-echoes of the modern era of colonization by corporations and of politics as a kind of moral evangelism. These are only a few of the topics that Edwards points out in his introduction; the reader will discover many more unaided. Nostromo is a difficult book, requiring intense concentration to read, but it provides much food for thought. And as the curse of the San Tomé silver propels the novel to its tragic but poetic conclusion, it is impossible not to recognize it as a great one. ...more

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Dec 18, 2011 Jim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, 20th-century-lit

This is my third reading of this strange and remarkable book. As I began re-reading the first half of the story, I felt disappointed -- as if my taste as the young student who first read this book had somehow traduced me. There was no central figure in this story: It was certainly not Gian' Battista Fidanza, a.k.a. Nostromo, the handsome capataz de cargadores; nor was it Charles and Emily Gould, owners of the San Tomé silver mine; nor was it the host of other characters that Conrad parades befor ...more

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Mar 27, 2013 Ivana rated it it was amazing

A masterpiece...

The funny thing is that for about a third of the novel, I had this strange feeling that there is something that was alluding me, something that I was not quite getting, like the story was for ever reason hard to follow and yet at the same time I felt immersed in the story and wanted to read more and more...

The characters seemed as real and as vivid as they possibly could had and still I felt a sense of distance, a fairy tale feeling. As I made my way towards to end, I had a feel A masterpiece...

The funny thing is that for about a third of the novel, I had this strange feeling that there is something that was alluding me, something that I was not quite getting, like the story was for ever reason hard to follow and yet at the same time I felt immersed in the story and wanted to read more and more...

The characters seemed as real and as vivid as they possibly could had and still I felt a sense of distance, a fairy tale feeling. As I made my way towards to end, I had a feeling of sudden clearness...the same that a person coming out of the dark has once his eyes get accustomed to the light, a feeling of seeing what you had hoped to see, that is usually joyous in its essence. Not that I wouldn't mind having a second look at it. A novel like this one should be read twice. I still have a feeling that I have missed something.

I was and (usually am) immensely attracted to Conrad's prose, to his words, to his rhythm... However, this time there was something in his writing that had reminded me of South American writers who favor magic realism (but for the life of me I wouldn't be able to define what). It is not exactly the usual definition of it, there are no ghosts and no event that is impossible or hard to believe...but in want of a better word "magic" will have to do.

Nostromo, our men...his name brings recollection of "he was one of us" (Lord Jim)...but who are "we" and who are "they"? The ones to whom we are "the other"? In some ways everything (and everyone) in this story resolves about "our men". He is the personification of the people..and yet such a cast of powerful and credible characters is created.

What a novel! Such a tale of pride, sadness and madness I'm not sure that I will ever read again. It felt as tragic as ancient plays, as beautifully sad to the core as the best of them. The only difference is that this novel hasn't dated...not even a day. Sadly, the tale of exploration, of lords and servants, of desperate fight in the name of "material interest" hasn't aged a day. Sadly, one has to say, for it would be so lovely to be able to say "this sort of thing doesn't happens anymore.", while on the contrary one is forced to say "it happens every day" if not "it happens more and more often..."

For me, the words "material interest" will forever haunt every memory of this novel. However, I guess that to fully understand the implications, you really have to read the novel. Or perhaps I'm just saying that to get you to read the novel...just in case my (pretty obvious) praise had failed. ...more

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Jun 16, 2019 Anna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Anna by: Chas

Shelves: fiction

‘Nostromo’ is the best illustration of the Resource Curse I’ve ever come across, although the phrase probably didn’t exist when Conrad was writing. It refers to countries that have plentiful natural resources and weak governance as a result of rapacious colonialism, so suffer from political instability and chronic corruption. Nigeria is a commonly cited example. In ‘Nostromo’, Conrad invents a South American country with a history of revolutions and dictatorships, centring his narrative on a sil ‘Nostromo’ is the best illustration of the Resource Curse I’ve ever come across, although the phrase probably didn’t exist when Conrad was writing. It refers to countries that have plentiful natural resources and weak governance as a result of rapacious colonialism, so suffer from political instability and chronic corruption. Nigeria is a commonly cited example. In ‘Nostromo’, Conrad invents a South American country with a history of revolutions and dictatorships, centring his narrative on a silver mine. The concession on the mine belongs to a white man named Gould who was born there, a second or third generation coloniser. The novel proceeds at a dilatory pace to show how obsession with mining the silver overtakes not only Gould but everyone in any contact with the mine’s affairs. And because the mine brings in such wealth, its affairs touch everyone. Although I doubt they were intended, there are definite Marxist subtexts of class struggle and commodity fetishism.

‘Nostromo’ greatly reminded me of a Greek tragedy in which the gods have been replaced by capitalism. It is clear from the beginning that the souls and lives of the characters will be claimed by their great deity, silver. While the plot is full of tension, this is sustained by inexorable threat rather than uncertainty. It isn’t so much a matter of who will be destroyed as how. Romantic love, however passionate, always ends up taking second place to the prospect of wealth. Conrad’s pitiless depiction of imperialist capitalism recalls Zola, although unlike Germinal ‘Nostromo’ doesn’t drag the reader down into the mine itself. The mine’s destructiveness is existential rather than physical. Although it unleashes extensive political violence, the horror of actually getting silver out of the earth remains unseen.

It took me at least a hundred pages to get into ‘Nostromo’, due to lengthy scene-setting and non-linear narrative. Some of the most exciting and dramatic events are told second hand through a sailor’s chatty anecdotes. Events slowly gather an extraordinary momentum, seemingly external to the characters involved. Nostromo himself is a very distinctive individual, yet it seems unlikely that his personal involvement actually changed the course of events. (view spoiler) At first I appreciated the rich texture of the writing and atmospheric description, while struggling to grasp who was who and what was happening. Once that had been established, I read more than 300 pages in a day and was totally fascinated by the political and personal machinations. Conrad has a subtle dramatic flair that richly rewards the reader’s patience. I haven’t found myself so immersed in a novel for several months.

Given other Conrad fiction I’ve read, I wasn’t surprised to find a certain amount of sexism, racism, and antisemitism in the narrative, however the way it manifested was actually quite interesting. The characters who aren’t white men are mostly critiqued via generalisation, while the white men are critiqued with harsh specificity for their individual greed, obsessiveness, pride, cowardice, or foolhardiness. Conrad focuses mercilessly on the flaws of his characters; he is the antithesis of Victor Hugo in this respect. He shows how the silver mine brings out the worst in everyone, rich or poor, man or woman, white or black, politician or worker. Yet, like Greek tragedy, ‘Nostromo’ doesn’t preach. The reader can claim no moral superiority over the characters, whose actions evoke understanding, even sympathy, given the context. This makes the novel all the more powerful as a condemnation of capitalist imperialism and its politics. I’m so glad that I finally got round to reading ‘Nostromo’. While these lines of Mrs. Gould’s don’t end the book, they make a fitting conclusion:

An immense desolation, the dread of her own continued life, descended upon the first lady of Sulaco. With a prophetic vision she saw herself surviving alone the degradation of her young ideals of life, of love, of work - all alone in the Treasure House of the World. The profound, blind suffering expression of a painful dream settled on her face with its closed eyes. In the indistinct voice of an unlucky sleeper, lying passive in the toils of a merciless nightmare, she stammered out aimlessly the words -
“Material interests.”

...more

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Jul 05, 2014 Nathan rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: abandonded, penguin-classics

DNF at 85 pages. This was a second attempt. I was so bored I couldn't make myself go on. I think I got to about 150 the first try. Maybe I'll push through it some day after I've read and enjoyed other books by Conrad. ...more

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Jan 18, 2021 Jon Nakapalau rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, economics, law, philosophy, cultural-studies, crime, politics, business, favorites, management

Greed stripped to the bone - at least you can eat bananas in such a republic - but tin pots with nothing to cook in them; funny thing is Che finds lots of 'Costaguanas' in his The Mortorcycle Diaries - ah well - truth is stranger than fiction - so 'they' say. ...more

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Mar 24, 2018 Cphe rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, dark-very-dark, 2018, classic, guardian-boxall-2018, conrad

Quite an adventure, the story of Nostromo a hero to the people of Sulaco. Initially found this very difficult to get into, sorting out a timeframe for events and for the characters themselves. Not easy to find a reading rhythm but once I did the story started to flow.

A lot of characters on offer but they all have depth and substance. A novel of good versus evil, wealth and poverty and following the money trail.

Edited to add that I was more than happy with this free edition. Hours of reading enjo ...more

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Jun 01, 2016 Ivana Books Are Magic rated it really liked it

“She was highly gifted in the art of human intercourse which consists in delicate shades of self-forgetfulness and in the suggestion of universal comprehension.”
― Joseph Conrad, Nostromo

I’m opening this review with a quote that to me personally seems to reveal something of this novel’s complexity. Universal comprehension, the suggestion of what lies beneath the surface, at times even mysticism…all of this can be found in this novel, for Conrad’s works are very profound and complex. It is deepl “She was highly gifted in the art of human intercourse which consists in delicate shades of self-forgetfulness and in the suggestion of universal comprehension.”
― Joseph Conrad, Nostromo

I’m opening this review with a quote that to me personally seems to reveal something of this novel’s complexity. Universal comprehension, the suggestion of what lies beneath the surface, at times even mysticism…all of this can be found in this novel, for Conrad’s works are very profound and complex. It is deeply ironic that in his own time, the critics failed to see the greatness of his works and hence he was considered to be a writer of nautical (adventure) stories. While many of his works have a nautical setting, they are much more meaningful then any mere adventure story could ever be. What kind of novel is this? A true masterpiece...there is no easier way to describe this novel. It is among the best that Conrad’s prose has to offer. So, if you happen to like this author, you must give it a try. If you have read and liked any of his other words, you will probably like this one as well.

The funny thing is that for about a third of the novel, I had this strange feeling that there is something that was alluding me, something that I was not quite able to understand, some subtle message I wasn't receiving, some hidden message I was not quite getting, like the story was for some reason hidden for me. It didn’t exactly felt hard to follow, but it did require concentration and yet at the same time I felt completely immersed in the story. Every moment of reading it was like being caught in some magical place and all I wanted to do was to read more and more...

The characters seemed as real and as vivid as they possibly could have. I related to the characters on personal level. However, I still felt a sense of distance, this uncanny almost fairy- tale like feeling of being surrounded by characters that feel both human and above human (kind of larger than life). As I made my way towards to end, I had a feeling of sudden clearness...I will never forget it. This feeling it was the similar to a feeling that a person coming out of the dark experiences once his eyes get accustomed to the light, a feeling of finally seeing, the mere joy of seeing being mixed with the happiness of experiencing your surroundings. Moreover, it was more than just seeing, it was seeing what you had hoped to see. That feeling of having your hopes fulfilled is usually joyous in its essence. Not that I wouldn't mind having a second look at it. A novel like this one should be read twice. I still have a feeling that I have missed something. I still want to read it another time, have another go, see what I might have missed.

I was and (still am) immensely attracted to Conrad's prose, to his words, to his rhythm...Nevertheless, this novel felt unique in one way. You see, this time there was something in his writing that had reminded me of South American writers who favour magic realism (but for the life of me I wouldn't be able to define what). It is not exactly the usual definition of it, there are no ghosts and no event that is impossible or hard to believe...but in want of a better word "magic" will have to do.

“...all this life, must be life, since it is so much like a dream.”
― Joseph Conrad, Nostromo

Nostromo, our men...his name brings recollection of "he was one of us" (Lord Jim) ...but who are "we" and who are "they"? The ones to whom we are "the other"? In some ways everything (and everyone) in this story resolves about "our men". He is the personification of the people (perhaps in a similar way Lord Jim is). However, despite the fact that the protagonist is so impressive, the other characters do not fall in his shadow. The reason for that is naturally the fact that the characterisation of other characters is very successful. Indeed, such a cast of powerful and credible characters is hard to find in any novel that I can think of. All the characters are created with much detail and finesse.

What a novel it is! Such a tale of pride, sadness and madness I'm not sure that I will ever read again. It felt as tragic as ancient plays, as beautifully sad to the core as the best of them. The only difference is that this novel hasn't dated...not even a day. Sadly, the tale of exploration, of lords and servants, of desperate fight in the name of "material interest" hasn't aged a day. Sadly, one has to say, for it would be so lovely to be able to say "this sort of thing doesn't happen anymore.", while on the contrary one is forced to say "it happens every day" if not "it happens more and more often..."

“It was another of Nostromo's triumphs, the greatest, the most enviable, the most sinister of all. In that true cry of undying passion that seemed to ring aloud from Punta Mala to Azuera and away to the bright line of the horizon, overhung by a big white cloud shining like a mass of solid silver, the genius of the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores dominated the dark gulf containing his conquests of treasure and love.”
― Joseph Conrad, Nostromo

For me, the words "material interest" will forever haunt every memory of this novel. However, I guess that to fully understand the implications, you really have to read the novel. It is certainly a must read. Or perhaps I'm just saying that to get you to read the novel...just in case my (pretty obvious and not at all subtle) praise had failed. I really do love this novel.
...more

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Jul 03, 2020 Nancy Oakes rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: uk-fiction

Once I got past the first few pages, I was completely into this amazing book. Written in 1904 but oh so relevant today as if Conrad could see into the future.

Definitely not for people who have short attention spans -- this one demands your complete attention and concentration.

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Sep 22, 2016 Nick rated it liked it

Joseph Conrad's "Nostromo" gets much love, perhaps more than any of the writer's works: the Modern Library ranks it high among all novels and F. Scott Fitzgerald was a particular fan. But in all the discussion about "Nostromo", I have yet to see any commentary on how oddly constructed it is. Conrad gets many things right about nineteenth century Latin America: the struggle between economic liberals and traditionalists, the deciding importance of the Army and especially its charismatic generals, Joseph Conrad's "Nostromo" gets much love, perhaps more than any of the writer's works: the Modern Library ranks it high among all novels and F. Scott Fitzgerald was a particular fan. But in all the discussion about "Nostromo", I have yet to see any commentary on how oddly constructed it is. Conrad gets many things right about nineteenth century Latin America: the struggle between economic liberals and traditionalists, the deciding importance of the Army and especially its charismatic generals, the power of American and European investments and the concession of national resources to them. (Although, oddly, the Church is a minor player in the background to the tale). But that is all, in a sense, stage business, the elaborate setting for a modern version of the Pardoner's Tale (or perhaps a proto-"Lord of the Rings") in which silver poisons everything. One can see the attraction for Fitzgerald: Nostromo, the Italian immigrant to the country of Costaguana is in some ways a proto-Gatsby. And Nostromo the person, despite side trips to the history of the local silver mine, and glancing references to the brutality of a past dictator and the strategy pursued by the generals who are dictators-in-training, is what interests Conrad here. Importantly, the main characters are mostly immigrants or their heirs, Italian refugees, a Jewish merchant, and a variety of English citizens or descendants of them. Even one of the major citizens of Costaguana is Martin DeCoud, of evident French heritage, feels more comfortable in Paris, and is, consequently, a major importer of ideas like a free press and liberty in general. In a similar vein but even more disturbing, Conrad goes out of his way on occasion to emphasize the African blood in the generals (brothers) who are set on conquering the silver-producing region and finishing off what remains of liberty in the country. Although liberty in this case is ill-defined: aside from the passion of an Italian immigrant who fought with Garibaldi, the pretensions of Decoud, and an occasional rhetorical flourish on behalf of the miners and stevedores (who, if Costaguana truly belongs to Latin America, have their own substantial portions of African and indigenous blood), freedom seems to consist of ownership and exploitation of the silver mine. And am I the only person to have noticed what a repellent name Costaguana is? Surely Conrad the seaman would have not chosen it without intent. So what we have here is a European morality play--and to be clear, Conrad has brought to it all his considerable skill as a writer--deposited in a Latin American setting about which he did considerable research. It makes me think of all the other Conradian fables, of Africa and the Pacific, and re-examine them for similarities, and certainly they are there, even in a text that I admire greatly, like "The Heart of Darkness", where the debate between Kurtz' beliefs and Marlow's skepticism take place in a theater of African blood (if I recall correctly, Conrad calls it savagery). What I advocate here is not an attempt to rewrite 19th century literature or throw it out because we have a better understanding of what was happening now; but neither do I see the utility of setting aside what we understand now when we look at the past. That debate aside, I return to the idea that this book is oddly constructed: a careful framework of Latin American themes carefully erected and the mostly ignored, while Europeans and Eurocentric locals have long discussions (once in the presence of the corpse of a man known to both debaters), plot, and become the victims of their own contriving. It could be set anywhere there is a precious natural resource and political violence, in itself an interesting setting. "Nostromo" could have been the great novel that others think it is. That, I think, would have taken a writer less narrowly focused on a narrow tragedy and with a greater sensitivity to the implications of the wider ones. ...more

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Nov 06, 2009 Justin Evans rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This one's tough to review. I want to recommend it to everyone, but that's probably just a waste of a lot of time. I read this about ten years ago as a young college student, and just re-read it. Even while re-reading, the only things I remember are i) wondering to myself, if this book is called Nostromo, why is Nostromo absent for most of the book? ii) a short passage about bringing people into a paradise of snakes, and iii) Nostromo saying to himself "If I see smoke coming from over there, the This one's tough to review. I want to recommend it to everyone, but that's probably just a waste of a lot of time. I read this about ten years ago as a young college student, and just re-read it. Even while re-reading, the only things I remember are i) wondering to myself, if this book is called Nostromo, why is Nostromo absent for most of the book? ii) a short passage about bringing people into a paradise of snakes, and iii) Nostromo saying to himself "If I see smoke coming from over there, they are lost." I have no idea why I remembered iii), but there you go.

The trick is, this book is great, but only if you've already done a *lot* of reading, particularly of the late nineteenth and early century's best novelists. Proust helps a lot. So does James. Even the less difficult modernists, like Forster, are useful. But Nostromo is not like Ulysses. I didn't understand Ulysses, but Joyce's writing is nice and there are some jokes to keep you going. Conrad's style here is wonderful, but not the sort of wonderful that keeps you going on its own. You need to be able to follow the plot, and you have to learn how to follow it.

But if you're either well-read or dedicated enough, this must be one of the best 50 novels- maybe even 20- of the twentieth century. The characters are hard to get a handle on, but once you do, they're extraordinary. Conrad's way of presenting the story is formally amazing. I've also been reading Genette's 'Narrative Structures,' and the tools in that book help make sense of this one (although Nostromo also shows up the problems with Genette's concepts, since they function best in first person narratives and not so well with third person narratives). The narrative seems to be all over the place. You get the consequences of and event before you get the event; you get two line summaries of what seem to be (but aren't) the most important events... and so it goes.

So do yourself a favour. Read the first four chapters. If you don't get into them, just stop and try it again ten years later. But keep trying! ...more

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Aug 12, 2016 Corto rated it it was amazing

I just finished this novel moments ago...and I'm just speechless. When I woke up this morning, I had roughly a hundred pages left...and without intending to or realizing what I was doing, I read utterly captivated, until I finished.

What a phenomenal novel.

It's a parable of revolution and the silver mine at its epicenter in a South American republic (circa early 1900's). As the story unfolds, it tells the tale of how the mine inspires, corrupts and motivates everyone in its immediate orbit, up th ...more

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Sep 02, 2013 Tanuj Solanki rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: south-america, britain, dictator-novel

Knottily plotted. The story hurtles forward only when a special narrative device is used. Otherwise the omniscient narrator is almost always a marker of description and stasis. The novel feels uneven; there are sharp edges, there are mellow troughs. These qualities are somewhat soaked by our eponymous hero as well. His heroism, although meant to be vain, can also be just damp at times.

There are beautiful long sentences that make you go tsk-tsk regarding the state of all, even literary, writing ...more

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Oct 01, 2009 Smiley rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, latin-america

I found this highly-acclaimed novel, "Nostromo," by Joseph Conrad quite tough to read, I mean how to focus on its mysterious plot, lengthy narrative, unfamiliar Spanish/French words or sentences, etc. I had no choice but kept reading based on my heart's content, that is, I'd read whenever I was in the mood and regarded it as a kind of my sleeping medicine. I kept consoling myself that I loved him since I had read his "Heart of Darkness" and "Lord Jim", therefore, this was simply another reading I found this highly-acclaimed novel, "Nostromo," by Joseph Conrad quite tough to read, I mean how to focus on its mysterious plot, lengthy narrative, unfamiliar Spanish/French words or sentences, etc. I had no choice but kept reading based on my heart's content, that is, I'd read whenever I was in the mood and regarded it as a kind of my sleeping medicine. I kept consoling myself that I loved him since I had read his "Heart of Darkness" and "Lord Jim", therefore, this was simply another reading mission to keep on the track and see to what extent I could enjoy reading him once again.

First, its title vaguely reminded me of Captain Nemo commanding his submarine “Nautilus” in a French scientific fiction by Jules Verne, thus I kept myself away and decided not to read it because it seemed intimidating but I found that it had no relation to the Captain at all. However, in 2005 I bought this hardcover from a Book Expo in Bangkok with its reasonable price (US$ 5 approximately) and later I changed my mind to read it and see if I could agree with the votes of 100 noted writers a decade ago. Eventually, I found it hard to agree with them due to its plot, I mean it has been set in Latin America, people uprising, silver mine scandal, etc. in which they are mysteriously complex and remote till its readers should have good background on the theme as well as be exceptionally-devoted Conrad readers. One more thing, I kept asking myself where has the key protagonist, Nostromo, stayed and done in the middle of the story (from my note on page 388: more than 100 pages since his last action) and has he been mortally wounded from the fight? Moreover, I found Part III more readable than Parts I & II (From my note on page 311). Out of the blue, this sentence stunned me: “A heavy sense of discomfiture crushed him: the loss of the silver, the death of Nostromo, which was really quite a blow to his sensibilities, because he had become attached to his Capataz as people get attached to their inferiors from love of ease and almost unconscious gratitude.” (p. 324) One of the reasons is that I have never read on his tragedy before, I guess this might have been a flashback technique.

Second, Conrad has long been famous for his narrative written in English as his third language, a rare genius indeed; let alone his grand, good words you can find all over its 532 pages. I’m not sure if his long paragraphs could be categorized as a kind of ‘stream of consciousness’ famously and masterly accomplished by Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, William James , etc. and I can assure you in case you would read him, be prepared to be hypnotized, lulled by his long sentences and magnificent words while reading. I think it’s one of his literary techniques. In fact, its readers should prefer their own interesting parts in this three-part novel, that is, PART FIRST The Silver of the Mine, PART SECOND The Isabels, PART THIRD The Lighthouse (p. v). For instance, I found this paragraph romantic, quite rare in his novels:

The dusk let him see yet the tender and voluptuous smile that came instinctively upon her lips shaped for love and kisses, freeze hard in the drawn, haggard lines of terror. He could not restrain himself any longer. While she shrank from his approach, her arms went out to him, abandoned and regal in the dignity of her languid surrender. He held her head in his two hands, and showered rapid kisses upon the upturned face, that gleamed in the purple dusk. … (p. 506)

Third, first published in 1904, this novel has understandably conformed to its genre by adopting foreign characters in a foreign country, somewhere uncivilized, untraditional and pioneering as compared to England, America or Europe. I can’t help finding Spanish/French words/sentences Greek to me, it’s a pity again; I wonder if there is any motive in compiling its Spanish/French glossary for its future printing. To illustrate my point, those who know Spanish/French excluded, please try reading to understand these three Spanish/French excerpts:
muy linda e maravillosa (p. 99)
Le sort en est jeté. (p. 156)
y hombres de muchos dientes (p. 418)
Regrettably, I also found these Spanish-sounding words on page 215 annoying: sombrero, lepero, cargador, and many innumerable more.

In sum, this novel is worth spending your time if you have determination and no fear of Joseph Conrad since you can learn a lot from his writing technique and miraculous choice of words, famously typical of his own since a century ago.
...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Marc rated it really liked it

Shelves: english-literature

Definitely Conrad's most accomplished novel. Of course the reading is very difficult because of the continually shifting in time, space and narrator, yet this is very clevery done. The core of the story is how silver can make even the hardest rock grow weak. Nostromo, that's us all!
(Rating 3.5 stars) ...more

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About Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

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Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski ) was a Polish-born English novelist who today is most famous for Heart of Darkness, his fictionalized account of Colonial Africa.

Conrad left his native Poland in his middle teens to avoid conscription into the Russian Army. He joined the French Merchant Marine and briefly employed himself as a wartime gunrunner. He then began to work aboard ...more

Books by Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction

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You might know comedian Colin Jost from his work as the co-anchor of Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, or perhaps you know him as Scarlett...

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“I suppose everybody must be always just a little homesick.” — 18 likes

“There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests. They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principle.” — 17 likes

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Preview — Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

Nostromo

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

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Community Reviews

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Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Joseph Conrad

Books by Joseph Conrad

Related Articles

Trivia About Nostromo

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