Youth & Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad

Sep 2000 · Naxos AudioBooks · Narrated by Brian Cox

About this audiobook

In these two magnificent novellas Conrad explores the question of self-discovery through powerful and exciting narratives in Youth, the experienced seaman Marlow tells the story of a young manÕs coming of age on his first voyage to the East. While in Heart of Darkness he describes with terrifying depth and vividness the slide into corruption of an idealistic traderÊÐ Kurtz, who has become the demi-devil of the Inner Station in the Belgian CongoÉ

About the author

Joseph Conrad is recognized as one of the 20th century's greatest English language novelists. He was born Jozef Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857, in the Polish Ukraine. His father, a writer and translator, was from Polish nobility, but political activity against Russian oppression led to his exile. Conrad was orphaned at a young age and subsequently raised by his uncle. At 17 he went to sea, an experience that shaped the bleak view of human nature which he expressed in his fiction. In such works as Lord Jim (1900), Youth (1902), and Nostromo (1904), Conrad depicts individuals thrust by circumstances beyond their control into moral and emotional dilemmas. His novel Heart of Darkness (1902), perhaps his best known and most influential work, narrates a literal journey to the center of the African jungle. This novel inspired the acclaimed motion picture Apocalypse Now. After the publication of his first novel, Almayer's Folly (1895), Conrad gave up the sea. He produced thirteen novels, two volumes of memoirs, and twenty-eight short stories. He died on August 3, 1924, in England.