Amy Foster

Joseph Conrad

May 2014 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

The story of a dull-witted but compassionate English girl who falls in love with a strange man from Eastern Europe. This ignorant, wild, and romantic peasant from the Carpathian Mountains has been cast up by the sea, the only survivor from an emigrant ship bound for America. Unable to speak a word of English and totally mystified as to where he is--it might have been America or Hell, itself--he leads a wretched and hunted existence till the chance kindness of Amy Foster opens his eyes.

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.