Heart of Darkness (Broadview Literary Texts) - Softcover

Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' is widely regarded as one of the most significant works of English literature and part of the Western canon. The story was the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now'. This highly symbolic story is actually a story within a story, or frame narrative. It follows Marlow as he recounts, from dusk through to late night, his adventure into the Congo to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary. The story details an incident when Marlow, an Englishman, took a foreign assignment as a ferry-boat captain, employed by a Belgian trading company. Although the river is never specifically named, readers may assume it is the Congo River, in the Congo Free State, a private colony of King Leopold II. Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver; however, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz, another ivory trader, to civilization in a cover up.

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was a Polish-born British novelist, writing in English, while living in England. Many critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in the English language, despite his not having learned to speak English fluently until he was in his twenties (and then always with a strong Polish accent). He became a naturalized British subject in 1886. He wrote stories and novels, predominantly with a nautical setting, that depicted the heroism of faith before the imperatives of duty, social responsibility and honor.