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Heart of Darkness
By Joseph Conrad.
Mass Market Paperback
First published 1899.
Published by Penguin
Books.
ISBN 13: 9780140431681
ISBN 10: 0140431683
ASIN: B001KTM47C
Author Joseph Conrad
based this novella on his own personal experiences, during a voyage up the
Congo River in 1890.
This novella was the
inspiration for the movie Apocalypse Now (1979), directed by Francis
Ford Coppola.
Description:
Written in the last year
of the nineteenth century, Heart of Darkness can be seen in many ways as the
first twentieth-century novel.
Its climate of doubt and
vagueness, its loss of moral confidence and its need for belief in the midst of
spiritual wilderness, its exploration of the subconscious and its affirmation
of individual freedom are all themes that were to have an influence on writers
such as Orwell, Godling Céline, Borges and Eliot.
In Heart of Darkness
Conrad unfolds the story of Marlow’s search for Mr Kurtz, the company agent
whose ‘unlawful soul’ has been ‘beguiled beyond the bounds of permitted
aspirations’ in his dealings with the natives of the Belgian Congo. Marlow’s
adventure involves him in a crucial reappraisal of his own values. It is Kurtz,
however, who attains to a vision of the inexpressible, terrifying reality of
the heart in this extraordinary exploration of human savagery and despair.
Book
cover image: The Steamer Stanley, by F. Hens.
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