Born into a Polish szlachta (noble) family, the extraordinary modern novelist Joseph Conrad maintained, even in exile, strong ties to his Polish heritage and culture. Yet the author earned renown by writing in English, often about nautical adventures in remote parts of the world. In Joseph Conrad's Polish Soul, G. W. Stephen Brodsky seeks to reclaim the essentially Polish sensibility of Conrad's groundbreaking oeuvre. He finds in Conrad's work a distinct Polonism that plays intriguingly with selfhood, freedom, and irony. For Brodsky, Conrad's outlook and writing betray numerous contradictions. Despite the novelist's practical realism, Conrad was drawn to romance, orientalism, and the exotic. Frequently sick, he nevertheless pursued a life at sea. He despised adventurers, yet loved risk. An instinctive skepticism, conservatism, and nationalism complicated his liberalism and respect for humanity, and though he resigned himself to Poland's tragic destiny, Conrad refused to despair over the terribleness of his times. In this incomparable study, Brodsky shows how these inherent aspects of Conrad's personality inform and guide his Polonism, along with the best attributes of his fiction.

“Enlightening, compassionate, superb” —John Le Carré Winner of the 2018 Cundhill History Prize A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 One of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2017 A visionary exploration of the life and times of Joseph Conrad, his turbulent age of globalization and our own, from one of the most exciting young historians writing today Migration, terrorism, the tensions between global capitalism and nationalism, and a communications revolution: these forces shaped Joseph Conrad’s destiny at the dawn of the twentieth century. In this brilliant new interpretation of one of the great voices in modern literature, Maya Jasanoff reveals Conrad as a prophet of globalization. As an immigrant from Poland to England, and in travels from Malaya to Congo to the Caribbean, Conrad navigated an interconnected world, and captured it in a literary oeuvre of extraordinary depth. His life story delivers a history of globalization from the inside out, and reflects powerfully on the aspirations and challenges of the modern world. Joseph Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857, to Polish parents in the Russian Empire. At sixteen he left the landlocked heart of Europe to become a sailor, and for the next twenty years travelled the world’s oceans before settling permanently in England as an author. He saw the surging, competitive "new imperialism" that planted a flag in almost every populated part of the globe. He got a close look, too, at the places “beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat lines,” and the hypocrisy of the west’s most cherished ideals. In a compelling blend of history, biography, and travelogue, Maya Jasanoff follows Conrad’s routes and the stories of his four greatest works—The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo. Genre-bending, intellectually thrilling, and deeply humane, The Dawn Watch embarks on a spell-binding expedition into the dark heart of Conrad’s world—and through it to our own.

DIVPolitical turmoil convulses 19th-century Russia as an assassination, government intrigue, and betrayal force a young student to come to terms with accountability and human integrity. /div

A diverse and multinational volume, this book showcases the passages of Joseph Conrad's narratives across geographical and disciplinary boundaries, focusing on the transtextual and transcultural elements of his fiction. Featuring contributions from distinguished and emergent Conrad scholars, it unpacks the transformative meanings which Conrad's narratives have achieved in crossing national, cultural and disciplinary boundaries. Featuring studies on the reception of Conrad in modern China, an exploration of Conrad's relationship with India, a comparative study of the hybrid art of Conrad and Salman Rushdie, and the responses of Conrad's narratives to alternative media forms, this volume brings out transtextual relations among Conrad's works and various media forms, world narratives, philosophies, and emergent modes of critical inquiry. Gathering essays by contributors from Canada, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Norway, Poland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this volume constitutes an inclusive, transnational networking of emergent border-crossing scholarship.

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad about a narrated voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State in the Heart of Africa.Charles Marlow, the narrator, tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. 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 what Conrad calls "the greatest town on earth", London, and Africa as places of darkness.

Almayer's Folly, published in 1895, is Joseph Conrad's first novel. Set in the late 19th century, it centers on the life of the Dutch trader Kaspar Almayer in the Borneo jungle and his relationship with his mixed heritage daughter Nina.

"The Warrior's Soul" is one of the best-known short stories written by Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). First published in 1917, it is a war tale of loyalty, murder and exile, set during Napoleon's retreat from Moscow.

Joseph Conrad (born Teodor Józef Konrad Korzeniowski, 3 December 1857 - 3 August 1924) was a Polish-born novelist. Some of his works have been labelled romantic: Conrad's supposed "romanticism" is heavily imbued with irony and a fine sense of man's capacity for self-deception. Many critics regard Conrad as an important forerunner of Modernist literature. Conrad's narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many writers, including Ernest Hemingway, D.H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, Joseph Heller and Jerzy Kosiński, as well as inspiring such films as Apocalypse Now (which was drawn from Conrad's Heart of Darkness).

Now in its second edition, this popular case-study of Conrad's classic short novel reprints an authoritative text together with five essays (four of which are newly-commissioned or revised) written from a range of contemporary critical perspectives.