Showing results by author "Joseph Conrad"

A Signature Performance: Kenneth Branagh plays this like a campfire ghost story, told by a haunted, slightly insane Marlow.

When Jim, a young merchant seaman, joins a ship carrying Muslims to Mecca, he's flush with heroic daydreams. But after only a few days aboard, the Patna hits something in the night and begins to take on water. In a crucial moment that tests his courage, Jim cowers and abandons ship rather than risk his life to save the pilgrims. Tried for shameful dereliction of duty, the guilt-ridden Englishman sets forth to make amends for his past in the remote territory of Patusan.

In Conrad's haunting novella, narrator Marlow recounts his experiences in the Congo Free State, and his chilling and perilous quest upriver in search of visionary ivory trader, the enigmatic Mr Kurtz. His journey, culminating in his eventual encounter with Kurtz, horrify and perplex Marlow, and lead him to question his own nature and values, and the whole concept of "civilization". 

This classic tale of intrigue, mystery and adventure takes place on the ivory harvesting and trade route in the Congo, in the depths of Africa. In this audiobook, Marlow, a sea captain on a ship at anchor, retells a story of his assignment upon a steamer ship in the Congo to a group of his ship mates. During his mission he is asked to retrieve and return Kurtz, an ivory hunter with a resounding reputation where ever his name is mentioned, who delivers more ivory than all the other stations combined, and who has a reverenced effect on the natives.

Our agent, a man named Mr Verloc, minds his own business while he keeps his shop in London's Soho, alongside his wife, who attends to her aged mother and disabled brother. Their lives are turned upside down when Verloc is reluctantly employed to plant a bomb and destroy an observatory in London. What was once the perfect bomb plot inevitably turns awry and Verloc, his family and his associates are forced to face the consequences.

Penguin Classics presents Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, adapted for listening and available as a digital audiobook as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by David Threlfall, the star of the hit Channel 4 series, Shameless. The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, rage - who can tell? But truth - truth stripped of its cloak of time.

On a becalmed yawl in the Thames estuary, Marlow tells a tale of Africa. His job there is to find the enigmatic Kurtz, but his journey further and further upriver reveals the brutality of the white Imperialists who run the country. Established as one of the great English novels, and a story of mythic power, Heart of Darkness is rich in meaning – allusive, enthralling, and haunting.

Typhoon is the story of a steamship and her crew beset by a tempest and of the captain whose dogged courage is tested to the limit. Captain MacWhirr was an ordinary man. However, when his steamer Nan-Shan blunders into a hurricane, he and his crew must pull together to survive. The steadfast courage of an undemonstrative captain and the imaginative readiness of his young first mate becomes a partnership vital to human survival as they are challenged from without by the elements, and from within by human doubts and fears.

Lord Jim tells the story of a young, idealistic Englishman---"as unflinching as a hero in a book"---who is disgraced by a single act of cowardice while serving as an officer on the Patna, a merchant-ship sailing from an eastern port. His life is ruined: an isolated scandal has assumed horrifying proportions. But then he is befriended by an older man named Marlow....

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads this Joseph Conrad classic tale of two white traders, Carlier and Kayerts, comical and pathetic, who move from polite society to the Congo, where they hope to become wealthy on the "Dark Continent" by spreading commerce and civilization to black Africa. But as was often the case, the longer they are away from civilization, the more the refinements of civilization slip away, along with their sanity.

Joseph Conrad’s multilayered masterpiece tells of one nation's violent revolution and one hero's moral degeneration. Conrad convincingly invents an entire country, Costaguana, and sets it afire as warlords compete for power and a fortune in silver.

Señor Gould, adamant that his silver should not become spoil for his enemies, entrusts it to his faithful longshoreman, Nostromo, a local hero of sorts whom Señor Gould believes to be incorruptible.

FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of this classic tale. Charles Marlow sits with is friends upon the Thames and tells the story of his time when he followed a similar watercourse up into the depths of Africa. That trip was intended for the relief of the mysterious Mr Kurtz, a man powerful and frightening. In the dark jungle the truth of mankind’s depravity is to be discovered, the very heart of darkness.

An astonishing collection of fifty of the greatest short stories ever written by some of literature's most highly acclaimed writers. 1. "Odour of Chrysanthemums" by D. H. Lawrence; 2. "Miss Harriet" by Guy de Maupassant; 3. "Twenty-six Men and a Girl" by Maxim Gorky; 4. "Hot Potatoes" by Arnold Bennett; 5. "Rats" by M. R. James; 6. "Zodomirsky’s Duel" by Alexandre Dumas; 7. "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin; 8. "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe; 9. "The Encased Man" by Anton Chekhov.

River steamboat captain Charles Marlow has set forth on the Congo in Africa to find the enigmatic European trader Mr. Kurtz. Preceded by his reputation as a brilliant emissary of progress, Kurtz has now established himself as a god among the natives in "one of the darkest places on earth." Marlow suspects something else of Kurtz: he has gone mad.

Although Heart of Darkness was one of the first literary texts to provide a critical view of European imperial activities, it was initially read by critics as anything but controversial. While the book was generally admired, it was typically seen either as a condemnation of a certain type of adventurer who could easily take advantage of imperialism’s opportunities, or else as a sentimental novel reinforcing domestic values: Kurtz’s Intended, who appears at the novella’s conclusion, was roundly praised by turn-of-the-century reviewers for her maturity and sentimental appeal. A classic.

In fading light on the Thames Estuary near London, as Charles Marlow and his companions relax on deck, waiting for the turn of the tide, he tells of the time he turned ‘freshwater sailor’ on the River Congo. His perilous journey upriver in a little steamboat with a band of white colonialists and a group of cannibals takes him closer to the coveted ivory, closer to Kurtz the rogue agent, closer to certain unspeakable rites and the heart of darkness.

Joseph Conrad's searing tale of one of the strangest and most memorable journeys ever taken. Quite simply the scariest book ever written, this is a searing tale of one of the strangest and most memorable journeys ever undertaken - to the heart of a geographical and psychological wilderness from which no-one returns unscarred. For this isn't simply a journey up an uncharted river into a geographical wilderness; rather, it's a trip deep into our collective subconscious.

Inspired by an actual terrorist attack on Greenwich Laboratory in 1894 ‘The Secret Agent’ is arguably Conrad’s greatest work. Mr. Verloc, the spy, is roused to action by his masters. He is to instigate an act ‘of destructive ferocity so absurd as to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, and almost unthinkable; in fact, mad’. All does not run smoothly however and leads to Mr Verloc’s wife, Winnie, demonstrating how quickly rational equilibrium can change to frenzied destruction.

When the new captain takes over command of his first ship for the homeward voyage from the Gulf of Siam, he surprises his crew by taking the first nightwatch himself. While alone on deck he is surprised to find a lone swimmer in the sea who comes on board. The stranger is a murderer escaping justice, but is also eerily an almost exact doppelganger of the captain himself. Not only does he look identical, but the two almost seem to share the same thoughts and secrets. Rather than turn his fugitive-double over to the authorities, the captain hides him in his own cabin.

From his many years on the high seas as a mariner, mate, and captain, Joseph Conrad created unique works, including Heart of Darkness, that have left an indelible mark on world literature. First published in 1899, his haunting novel Lord Jim is both a riveting sea adventure and a fascinating portrait of a unique outcast from civilization.