On a boat in the Thames estuary, Marlow tells his travelling companions of his reconnaissance expedition for a Belgian trading company to its most remote outpost in central Africa, which brought him on the trail of the elusive Kurtz, a brilliant idealist gone rogue. His account relates not only the perils he encounters on his quest, but also the deterioration of his state of mind as he is confronted with a world that is hostile and alien to him.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. 'The girl he had come across... that human being so near and still so strange, gave him a greater sense of his own reality than he had ever known in all his life.' Damaged by his father's nihilistic philosophy, Axel Heyst has withdrawn from the world to live in near-isolation on the island of Samburan. His solitude ends when he rescues an English girl from her preying patron, but their heady existence will face tragic consequences when the outside world intrudes once more. First published in 1915, 'Victory' is arguably the most psychologically complex of Conrad's novels, in which he creates an extraordinarily compelling love story and one of great erotic power: Axel and Lena are what set this novel apart from the other works of one of English language's greatest writers.

It was as if the sea, breaking down the wall protecting all the homes of the town, had sent a wave over her head. One of Conrad's most powerful, gripping stories. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, The Secret Sharer and Other Stories, Typhoon and Other Stories and Under Western Eyes are available in Penguin Classics.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. Who could tell what forms, what visions, what faces, what forgiveness he could see in the glow of the west! Jim is a well-bred young romantic who takes to the seas with hopes of adventure and the aspiration to prove his mettle. When the boat he sails in threatens to sink, Jim abandons ship in fear in order to save himself, leaving the other passengers to their fate. However, the ship does not sink and guilt-ridden Jim admits to the maritime court of inquiry that he deserted the boat and is consequently stripped of his sailing papers. Blighted by his own cowardice, Jim's subsequent self-exile to a remote Malaysian trading post gives Conrad the opportunity to explore the question of moral identity and through his hero, he embodies the values and deterioration of the declining empire of late Victorian Britain. With its rich descriptions of an unknown, exotic world and beautifully constructed prose, Lord Jim is considered one of Conrad's greatest works.

Helbling Readers Blue Series is designed for teenagers and young adults. Readers can choose from sensitively adapted teen-relevant classics and a gripping selection of original fiction.

Resting one night on a boat on the River Thames, Charlie Marlow tells his friends about his experiences as a steamboat captain on the River Congo. There, in the heart of Africa, his search for the extraordinary Mr Kurtz caused him to question his own nature and values – and the nature and values of his society.

'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. Let the fool gape and shudder — the man knows, and can look on without a wink'. Marlow, a seaman, tells of a journey up the Congo. His goal is the troubled European and ivory trader Kurtz. Worshipped and feared by invaders as well as natives, Kurtz has become a godlike figure, his presence pervading the jungle like a thick, obscuring mist. As his boat labours further upstream, closer and closer to Kurtz's extraordinary and terrible domain, so Marlow finds his faith in himself and civilization crumbling. Conrad's Heart of Darkness has been considered the most important indictment of the evils of imperialism written to date. The Penguin English Library — 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Adolf Verloc is a double agent, working for both the British police and a foreign country. He pretends to live a normal life, with his wife, Winnie, and has a shop in London, which, at night, becomes a meeting place for anarchists. One day Verloc is told to plant a bomb but the plan goes terribly wrong Does Verloc really love Winnie, or is she just part of his cover? Can Winnie ever forgive him? Who is Verloc really working for?

There's some bad weather out there, Captain MacWhirr said to himself just before he sailed his ship, the Nan-Shan, into the middle of the most terrible storm in the South China Sea. The typhoon brings out the best in some men on the ship, and the worst in others. Can MacWhirr bring the ship through the storm safely? And what will happen to all the poor Chinese workers travelling home down in the ship's hold?

«Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be «a simple tale» proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats and London's fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations. Based on the text which Conrad's first English readers enjoyed, this new edition includes a full and up-to-date bibliography, a comprehensive chronology and a critical introduction which describes Conrad's great London novel as the realization of a «monstrous town», a place of idiocy, madness, criminality, and butchery. It also discusses contemporary anarchist activity in the UK, imperialism, and Conrad's narrative techniques.»

Victory, don't forget, has come out of my innermost self. Victory was the last of Conrad's novels to be set in the Malay Archipelago. Sub-titled An Island Tale, it tells the story of Axel Heyst who, damaged by his dead father's nihilistic philosophy, has retreated from the world of commerce and colonial exploration to live alone on the island of Samburan. But Heyst's solitary existence ends when he rescues an English girl from her rapacious patron and takes her off to his retreat. She in turn recalls him to love and life, until the world breaks in on them once more with tragic consequences. In this love story Conrad created two of his psychologically most complex and compelling characters in a narrative of great erotic power. This new edition uses the English first edition text and has a new chronology and bibliography.

Conrad’s spiritual journey into darkest Africa is based on his own experience in the Congo at the end of the 19th century. Marlow, the narrator, is torn between revulsion for and attraction towards colonialism but is driven onwards by an overwhelming desire to meet the mysterious Kurtz.

«In this pair of literary voyages into the inner self, Conrad wrote two of the most chilling, disturbing, and noteworthy pieces of fiction of the 20th century. «Heart of Darkness» and «The Secret Sharer» encapsulate his literary achievements — and his haunting portrayal of the dark side of man.»

To the white men in the waterside business and to the captain of ships he was just Jim — nothing more. He had, of course, another name, but he was anxious that it should not be pronounced. 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 blighted: an isolated scandal assumes horrifying proportions. An older man, Marlow, befriends Jim, and helps to establish him in Patusan, a remote Malay settlement. There he achieves a kind of peace, but his courage is put to the test once more. Lord Jim is one of the most profound and rewarding psychological novels in English. Set in the context of social change and colonial expansion in late Victorian England, it embodies in Jim the values and the turmoil of a fading empire. In his introduction and notes to this new edition Jacques Berthoud explores the social and cultural dynamics that inform the novel.

I have heard no end of tales of his strength, his audacity, his fidelity... incorruptible! It is indeed a name of honour for the Capataz of the Cargadores of Sulaco. One of the greatest political novels in any language, Nostromo enacts the establishment of modern capitalism in a remote South American province locked between the Andes and the Pacific. In the harbourtown of Sulaco, a vivid cast of characters is caught up in a civil war to decide whether its fabulously wealthy silver mine, funded by American money but owned by a third-generation English immigrant, can be preserved from the hands of venal politicians. Greed and corruption seep into the lives of everyone, and Nostromo, the principled Capataz, is tested to the limit. Conrad's evocation of the great Latin-American landscapes, the ferocity of its politics, and individuals swept up in imperial ambitions has never been bettered. This edition offers new insights into Conrad's masterpiece.

A sudden passion of anxious impatience rushed through my veins and gave me such a sense of the intensity of existence as I have never felt before or since. link title to catalogue entry (exact date?) 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. This is indeed a work full of sudden passions, in which Conrad is able to show how the full intensity of existence can be experienced by the man who, in the words of the older Captain Giles, is prepared to stand up to his bad luck, to his mistakes, to his conscience. A subtle and penetrating analysis of the nature of manhood, The Shadow-Line investigates varieties of masculinity and desire in a subtext that counterpoints the tale's seemingly conventional surface.

Lush prose and penetrating psychological insight infuse Conrad's first novel with the qualities that have made him one of the most popular and most studied writers in English literature. The novel chronicles the tragic decline of a Dutch merchant isolated in 19th-century Borneo, the machinations of his bitter Malayan wife, and the loss of his much loved daughter.

An Outcast of the Islands (1896), Conrad`s second novel, is a tale of intrigue in an eastern setting. Love and death are the major players in this parable of human frailty — the story of a man unable to understand others and fated never to possess his own soul.

Nostromo is the only man capable of the decisive action needed to save the silver of the San Tome mine and secure independence for Sulaco, Occidental province of the Latin American state of Costaguana. Is his integrity as unassailable as everyone believes, or will his ideals, like those which have inspired the struggling state itself, buckle under economic and political pressures? Nostromo is an extraordinary illustration of the impact of foreign commercial exploits on a young developing nation, and the problems of reconciling individual identity with a social role.