Showing results by author "Joseph Conrad" in All Categories

Set during the Napoleonic Wars, this story features two French Hussar officers, D'Hubert and Feraud. Their quarrel over an initially minor incident turns into a bitter, long-drawn out struggle over the following fifteen years, interwoven with the larger conflict that provides its backdrop. At the beginning, Feraud is the one who jealously guards his honor and repeatedly demands satisfaction anew when a duelling encounter ends inconclusively; he aggressively pursues every opportunity to locate and duel his foe.

Written in 1915, The Shadow-Line is based upon events and experiences from twenty-seven years earlier to which Conrad returned obsessively in his fiction. A young sea captain's first command brings with it a succession of crises: his sea is becalmed, the crew laid low by fever, and his deranged first mate is convinced that the ship is haunted by the malignant spirit of a previous captain.

Jim, a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the hajj. When the ship starts rapidly taking on water and disaster seems imminent, Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers. A few days later, they are picked up by a British ship. However, the Patna and its passengers are later also saved, and the reprehensible actions of the crew are exposed. The other participants evade the judicial court of inquiry, leaving Jim to the court alone.

In these four stories, written between 1900 and 1902, Joseph Conrad bid gradual farewell to his adventurous life at sea and began to confront the more daunting complexities of life on land in the twentieth century. In 'Typhoon' Conrad reveals, in the steadfast courage of an undemonstrative captain and the imaginative readiness of his young first mate, the differences between instinct and intelligence in a partnership vital to human survival.

A brave Malay chieftain suffers from a surprising vulnerability. After giving birth to a series of unfortunate children, a farmer's wife is determined to bear no more. A spoonful of sugar brings a neophyte ivory trader to a moment of Nietzschean self-realisation. A pompous ass discovers that his wife has run off with another man. Secluded in an eerie lagoon, a Malay carries a guilty secret in his heart. "Tales of Unrest" was the first volume of short fiction Joseph Conrad published in his own lifetime.

"Here speaks the man of masts and sails, to whom the sea is not a navigable element, but an intimate companion. The length of passages, the growing sense of solitude, the close dependence upon the very forces that, friendly to-day, without changing their nature, by the mere putting forth of their might, become dangerous to-morrow, make for that sense of fellowship which modern seamen, good men as they are, cannot hope to know."

Today, we're likely to react to the title of this novella, on whose 'sincerity of expression' Conrad was willing to stake his artisitic reputation, with visceral disgust. There is a sad irony in this, for Conrad's title originally alluded to a rather complex set of meanings, implying that, by virtue of our human nature, we all carry within the fragile vessel that is our idealised image of ourselves a darker being we find troubling, even despicable, but with whom we must eventually come to terms.

Conrad began dictating the series of loose autobiographical sketches that would become 'A Personal Record' in 1911, when he was half way through writing 'Under Western Eyes'. His avowed aim was to give his readers a sense of 'the man behind the work', and he certainly succeeded in creating a vivid impression of the kind of Joseph Conrad he would have liked to have been seen as: a man capable of wry humour and self-deprecation, but a sober, serious man too, prepared to face life as he found it.

Almayer’s Folly, Joseph Conrad’s first novel, is a tale of personal tragedy as well as a broader meditation on the evils of colonialism. Set in the lush jungle of Borneo in the late 1800s, it tells of the Dutch merchant Kaspar Almayer, whose dreams of riches for his beloved daughter, Nina, collapse under the weight of his own greed and prejudice. Nadine Gordimer writes in her Introduction, “Conrad’s writing is lifelong questioning.

Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad, was originally a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899. It is a story within a story, following a character named Charlie Marlow, who recounts his adventure to a group of men onboard an anchored ship. The story told is of his early life as a ferry boat captain. Although his job was to transport ivory downriver, Charlie develops an interest in investing an ivory procurement agent, Kurtz, who is employed by the government.

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. He came to be regarded a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of what he saw as an impassive, inscrutable universe. Conrad is considered a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, though his works also contain elements of 19th-century realism.

A young sea captain, struggling with the problems of his first far-Eastern command, is befriended by Hermann, commander of a German ship moored nearby in a treacherous river. But when the monopolistic tugboat captain Falk perceives him as a rival for Hermann's beautiful niece, the young man's problems suddenly increase—until he offers his diplomatic assistance in Falk's courtship. But Falk is haunted by an incident in his past, which he feels he must confess.

Zehn Meisterwerke von weltberühmten Autoren versammeln sich in dieser Hörbuch-Box! Mit dabei: "In der Strafkolonie" (Kafka), "Die Marquise von O." (Kleist), "Eine blassblaue Frauenschrift" (Werfel), "Der arme Spielmann" (Grillparzer), "In den Chambregarnies" (Tschechow), "Wieviel Erde braucht der Mensch?" (Tolstoi), "Die Zeitmaschine" (H.G. Wells), "Triumph der Schönheit" (Roth), "Die schwarze Spinne" (Gotthelf), "Jugend" (Conrad).

Der berühmte Klassiker erstmals als mitreißendes Abenteuerhörspiel. Ostindien, um 1900 herum: Kapitän Marlowe erzählt die wahre Geschichte eines jungen, gutaussehenden Offiziers voller Drang nach Heldentum und großen Taten. Doch es kommt anders: Im entscheidenden Moment verliert er die Nerven und verlässt das sinkende Schiff, auf dem er dient. 800 Pilger drohen zu ertrinken. Er stellt sich der Justiz, verliert sein Offizierspatent und seine Ehre und muss fliehen, vor sich und der Wirklichkeit.

Fünf beruflich erfolgreiche Männer sitzen beisammen. Auch wenn sie in verschiedenen Professionen ihr Geld gemacht haben, ist ihnen doch eines gemeinsam: Ihre Erfahrung auf See. Einer von ihnen, Marlow, erzählt, wie er sein erstes Kommando als zweiter Offizier auf einem Kohlenfrachter nach Bangkok erhielt. Von Anfang an steht die Reise unter keinem guten Stern; zahlreiche Zwischenfälle verhindern das Auslaufen. Endlich auf hoher See, wird bald ein merkwürdiger Geruch spürbar – und eine Rauchfahne, die aus dem Kohlenbunker aufsteigt. Bald brennt die Ladung lichterloh – und Marlow erlebt das größte Abenteuer seiner Jugend.

Country doctor Kennedy tells the story of Amy Foster, a tender-hearted country girl, who alone takes pity on a starving and bewildered foreign castaway, feared and shunned by the rest of her community. The castaway proves to be amiable and intelligent, but this is not enough to overcome the prejudice aroused by his alienness.

Drawn to the little seaport of Colebrook by an anonymous letter, elderly and eccentric Captain Hagberd settles down to build a home ready for the day when his son, Harry, who ran away to sea many years ago, finally returns. As the years pass, the old man convinces himself that Harry will come back on some never-realized "to-morrow", and Bessie, the lonely and unhappy daughter of the Captain's neighbor, comes to share in the Captain's desperate hope....

"Racconti dell’inquietudine" raccoglie cinque brevi testi che offrono –al fan di lunga data, così come a chi intenda leggere Conrad per la prima volta – un prontuario dei temi più cari e delle ambientazioni più esotiche dell’avventuroso scrittore polacco.

The steamship Nan-Shan, en route through the China seas to the port of Fu-chau during the season of tropical storms, with 200 returning Chinese workers aboard, encounters an ominous fall in the barometer. Phlegmatic and unimaginative Captain MacWhirr, unable to comprehend the awesome natural forces ahead of him, refuses to alter his course, pitting his ship and his own indomitable will against the fury of the storm.

Jim versucht, seiner Vergangenheit zu entkommen. Als Erster Offizier auf einem Pilgerschiff beging er einen schrecklichen Fehler, der ihn Ruf und Laufbahn kostete. Nach langen Reisen erreicht er die entlegene Insel Patusan im Indischen Ozean, wo er sich das Vertrauen der Einheimischen erwirbt. Als Friedensstifter wird er hoch verehrt, aus Jim wird Lord Jim. Doch dann tauchen Piraten auf, und sie scheinen zu wissen, wer er wirklich ist.