• Heart of Darkness is a novella by Joseph Conrad serialized in 1899 and published in 1902.

• Fast Facts

  1. Author: Joseph Conrad
  2. Genre: Fiction
  3. Publication Date: 1899 as serial, 1902 as novella
  4. Publisher: Blackwood's Magazine
  5. ISBN 9781420922349
  6. Adaptations: 1979 film Apocalypse Now
  7. Conrad didn't learn English until in his 20's
  8. Considered a great work of western literature
  9. Themes: Man's inhumanity to man, good and evil, civilization and savagery
  10. Famous Quote: "The horror! The horror!"

• Plot Synopsis

  Heart of Darkness follows Marlow, a boat worker who is given the mission of traveling down a river in the Congo during the Colonization of Africa to retrieve a boat and a missing employee. Along the way, he witnesses many atrocities committed against the native population and begins to lose grip on his sanity. When he finds the missing employee, Mr. Kurtz, Marlow discovers that he has lost his mind. Kurtz has become ruler of a kingdom of savages who decorate their homes with dismembered human body parts.

• Critical Reception

  • "One of the great, if troubling, visionary works of Western civilization." - Joyce Carol Oates

  • "evenhanded... it connects Conrad palpably to the European colonization of the continent" - Harper's Magazine

• Related Mahalo Pages

  Joseph Conrad | Graham Greene | Henry James | E.M. Forster | D.H. Lawrence | T.S. Eliot | Apocalypse Now | Francis Ford Coppola | Congo | John Malkovich

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