Heart Of Darkness and Lord Jim: By Joseph Conrad - Illustrated

by Joseph Conrad

Don't buy cheap paperbacks just to save a few dollars. Most of them use low-quality papers & binding. Their pages fall off easily. Some of them even use very small font size of 6 or less to increase their profit margin. It makes their books completely unreadable. 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 Marlow. 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. Lord Jim is a novel by Joseph Conrad originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900. An early and primary event is the abandonment of a ship in distress by its crew including the young British seaman Jim. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to terms with himself and his past.

326 pages, Paperback

First published March 13, 2013

About the author

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language and, although he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he became a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote novels and stories, many in nautical settings, that depict crises of human individuality in the midst of what he saw as an indifferent, inscrutable, and amoral world.
Conrad is considered a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, though his works also contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in Lord Jim, for example, have influenced numerous authors. Many dramatic films have been adapted from and inspired by his works. Numerous writers and critics have commented that his fictional works, written largely in the first two decades of the 20th century, seem to have anticipated later world events.
Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew on the national experiences of his native Poland—during nearly all his life, parceled out among three occupying empires—and on 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.

Reviews

[spillingthematcha]

„Żyjemy tak jak śnimy – samotnie”

[Atinah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mogło być gorzej, ale w sumie przez większość czasu byłam w innym świecie, więc to chyba średnio dobrze świadczy o tej lekturze.

[KK · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mam z tą książką relację jak z ojcem - czyli jej nie mam.
W skrócie ładny, dobry koncept i teoretycznie styl nie najgorszy, ale jednak czegoś tutaj brakowało.

[Marek Michalak · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Jądro Ciemności" oceniłem już osobno. Natomiast "Lord Jim" to opowieść, która mimo mistrzowskich obrazów, jakie Conrad potrafi wytworzyć swymi słowami w wyobraźni czytelnika, nie porywa. Jest, niestety, koszmarnie rozwleczona i pełna powtórzeń i zapętleń. Nic więc dziwnego, że jako lektura do dziś męczy młodych, chyba w większości niedojrzałych do tematu czytelników. Również pojęcie "honoru" jako wartości nadrzędnej, określającej prawdziwego gentlemana (jednocześnie będącego - a jakże kolonizatorem, mizoginem i rasistą - mocno się już zdewaulowało.
Jest w tej historii coś porywającego, ale na pewno nie na tyle, by zafascynować się postacią Jima w takim stopniu jak narrator.