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Heart of Darkness Paperback – April 23, 2018

by Joseph Conrad (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 7,762 ratings
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Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. As he travels to Africa and then up the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations. The native inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Company’s service, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill treatment at the hands of the Company’s agents. The cruelty and squalor of imperial enterprise contrasts sharply with the impassive and majestic jungle that surrounds the white man’s settlements, making them appear to be tiny islands amidst a vast darkness.
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  1. Print length
    76 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    April 23, 2018
  4. Dimensions
    6 x 0.18 x 9 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    1717294065
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1717294067
  7. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (April 23, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 76 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1717294065
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1717294067
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.18 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 7,762 ratings

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  1. Joseph Conrad

    Joseph Conrad

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    Polish author Joseph Conrad is considered to be one of the greatest English-language novelists, a remarkable achievement considering English was not his first language. Conrad s literary works often featured a nautical setting, reflecting the influences of his early career in the Merchant Navy, and his depictions of the struggles of the human spirit in a cold, indifferent world are best exemplified in such seminal works as Heart of Darkness, Lord JimM, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, and Typhoon. Regarded as a forerunner of modernist literature, Conrad s writing style and characters have influenced such distinguished writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, and George Orwell, among many others. Many of Conrad s novels have been adapted for film, most notably Heart of Darkness, which served as the inspiration and foundation for Francis Ford Coppola s 1979 film Apocalypse Now.

    Conrad Fischer, M.D., is one of the most experienced educators in medicine today. His breadth of teaching extends from medical students to USMLE prep to Specialty Board exams. In addition, Dr. Fischer is the Associate Chief of Medicine for Educational and Academic Activities at SUNY Downstate School of Medicine, and is an Attending Physician at King's County Hospital in Brooklyn, NY. Dr. Fischer has been Chairman of Medicine for Kaplan Medical since 1999, and has held Residency Program Director positions at both Maimonides Medical Center and Flushing Hospital in New York City.

    Sonia Reichert, MD., is the Director of Medical Curriculum for Kaplan Medical.

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  2. Christopher Broschell

    Christopher Broschell

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    Christopher Broschell lives in southern Ontario with his beautiful wife, adorable daughter and slightly more adorable cat. He holds a degree in print journalism from Ryerson University.

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  3. DDN Publisher

    DDN Publisher

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    Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

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    DDN Publisher have published numerous lifetime classics from famous authors such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley and many more.These classics are evergreen. You will love them.

    DDN Publisher also published an activity book for kids and journal.

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Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
7,762 global ratings
“Exquisitely written”
5 Stars
“Exquisitely written”
“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there.”J. Conrad exceptional style of writing makes the reader live the horror again. It’s morbid, it’s scary, it’s disturbing, it’s beautifully descriptive, and exquisitely written.One of three books I gave 5 stars.Dr. Amir GendySurgeon and Author of “BETTER” and “The Future of Medicine and the Fate of Humanity” and the soon to be published this Thxgvg “THE abNORMAL”amirgendy.com
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Top reviews from the United States

Michael Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars Heart and Mind
Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2010
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I recently re-read the Joseph Conrad novella Heart of Darkness, a perennial classic and the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's  Apocalypse Now . Having first read this powerful piece in high school, there was much I had forgotten. I am glad to have revisited it. This time it really hit home: just how relative its themes of greed, corruption, and redemption are in today's world. We may draw a comparison to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the world's hunger for oil and its consequences, or even to the megalomania we've seen recently that has been the ruin of US and other market economies.

Conrad's story takes place in 19th century colonial Africa; a virtual free-for-all for holding companies and the like scrambling to lay claims on precious minerals (gold, silver) and other natural resources (ivory, slaves) in its vast untapped interior. The problem for these greed machines was finding personnel willing or ignorant enough to brave the "darkness": wild animals, disease, uncivilized tribal societies (some cannibalistic). Kurtz was one such individual who travels downriver into the thicket to set up a station for his employers, but experiences a taste of totemic worship, he being the totem. His sad tale is told by Marlow, a "seaman" and a "wanderer" who was employed by the same administrative company as Kurtz.

"...their administration," says Marlow "was merely a squeeze and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors and for that you want only brute force -- nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others."

Marlow relates his experiences on the vast interior river (Congo?) which culminate in his search, along with the company manager and a native crew, for the elusive Kurtz who had terminated communication with the civilized world months before. After finally finding an ailing Kurtz downriver, Marlow's own obsession with just listening to this fellow comes to fruition in a haze of disenchantment. Delusion and dementia, along with his adoring natives, have claimed him, But Marlow, at the urging of the manager, must retrieve Kurtz (and his ivory) to the company's outpost. It is on the way back, after a reckless escape, that Kurtz will utter those infamous and harrowing last words: "The horror, the horror."

For me Kurtz represents the iconic Soldier led into the great Darkness of some war (Iraq) or material venture (oil) perpetrated by the "conquerors" (guess who). In this analogy, Kurtz's ultimate madness relates to the current epidemic of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) we see in our troops returning from the war zones.Unfortunately Kurtz's "horror" is being experienced, in some manner, by thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan vets today. These are just disillusioned kids returning home to their families without jobs, without limbs, without peace of mind; with nightmares. So who is Marlow, in this tale? Is he us?

In Heart of Darkness Marlow finally must face Kurtz's grieving fiancee back in London. She entreats him to assure her of Kurtz's final moments, since he was, must have been, her loved one's friend.

"Your were with him -- to the last?" she asks.

"'To the very end,' I said, shakily. 'I heard his very last words...' I stopped in a fright.

"'Repeat them,' she murmured in a heart-broken tone. 'I want --I want -- something -- something -- to -- to live with.'

Marlow is suddenly faced with a dilemma. And so are we. Will we lie as Marlow does or will we face the ugly truth?
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Ashutosh S. Jogalekar
4.0 out of 5 stars Rambling but interesting, hallucinatory and yet clear
Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2017
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I first read Conrad in college but at that time much of it slipped past me, unappreciated and ignored. So I decided to read it again, and this time appreciated it better while still finding it a bit overrated. It was also instructive to compare it another example of post-colonial angst: J. M. Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians". Like Coetzee's magistrate, Conrad's Marlow is a trader on a steamboat, sailing into the heart of darkness, the inchoate hole of the ivory trade deep in the jungles of Africa. Like the magistrate he has a perceptive eye and alternately appreciates and loathes the trappings of empire. The central character in the book apart from Marlow - and the famous inspiration for Marlon Brando's character in "Apocalypse Now" - is a trader named Mr. Kurtz, a man of endless ambiguity, power and sinister possibilities whose name seems to be on everybody's lips, who is considered a shadow that has gone mad, but who still evokes almost universal idolatry and jealousy. Much of "Heart of Darkness" centers on Marlow's observations on both Europeans and Africans and his search for Mr. Kurtz. Kurtz is in some ways everything that was wrong about colonialism and the exploitation of natives.

Personally I think that the themes with which the book deals, involving, again, the hypocrisy and avarice of white traders in Africa and the ennobling narratives which they construct in order to sustain this dirty business, must have been novel in 1905, but are less so now when the ugly history of imperialism is part of the history books. Nonetheless, the characters of Marlow and Kurtz - one a self-loathing and observant cog in the system and the other the central gear - are universals which have existed in other ages and times. Kafka and Dostoyevsky among others have treaded this territory well.

Since it was first published in 1905, Conrad's novel has become famous, mostly because of the ambiguity of its language and characters and the haunting beauty of the human and physical landscape: the famous dying words of Kurtz, "The horror! The horror!", continue to spark debate. It has also become controversial because while the Europeans are properly lambasted as greedy oppressors in the story, the Africans are presented as a faceless whole without individual personalities. Some have accused Conrad of xenophobia in doing this, but the key thing to realize is that Conrad describes the Africans exactly as racist and xenophobic white Europeans saw them then. In that sense his novel couldn't be a more accurate reflection of reality.

English was actually Conrad's third language; Polish and French being his first and second. It can be pretty frustrating to follow the impaired flow of language in the novel. However, there are also times - most notably in describing both the darkness in people's hearts as well as that of Africa - that the prose remarkably soars and glistens. The ambiguity and spare descriptions, the constant to and fro between various characters and the sometimes non-linear narrative lend a hallucinatory hue to the whole enterprise, one which has been responsible to no small extent for the constant literary churning of the book. It's one of those stories where one can see what one wants to, but it should be noted that if a novel is famous *purely* for the ambiguity of its writing, it can veer dangerously close to being a poor novel. The often luminous nature of Conrad's writing rescues "Heart of Darkness" from its fate, but it also downgrades (gasp) the book from being a truly great novel to a very good and thought-provoking one in my opinion. Conrad's later "The Secret Agent" is a much better example of literary complexity and a more developed sense of language.

Ultimately both Conrad and Coetzee are valuable because they expose the rotten seed at the heart of the alluring colonial fruit: the ultimately hypocrisy of colonialism throughout history is that while every colonial conquerer and bureaucrat has claimed to bring enlightenment to his conquered masses, in reality the base greed, superficiality and dark, exploitative qualities of the conquerer make him far more rotten and barbarous than any of his supposedly barbarous subjects.
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Serge A. Simard
5.0 out of 5 stars Yes, worth reading
Reviewed in Canada on October 17, 2022
Verified Purchase
Once you know the conditions in Congo in those days, you see that what is written in Heart of Darkness is subtle, subdued, almost avoids the question of black suffering. I love this book. It is odd, sometimes incomplete but I read it once a year. I want to find my own answers in an absurd world and this book seems to mirror that. But you may not enjoy this book.
2 people found this helpful
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Madhumita Pahari
5.0 out of 5 stars Great novel
Reviewed in India on January 20, 2024
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It's definitely a great novel... the storyline is definitely pretty good....
One person found this helpful
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Krümelmonster75
5.0 out of 5 stars Pflichtlektüre
Reviewed in Germany on January 19, 2024
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Conrads Meisterwerk in einer sehr guten Neuauflage. Viele Zusatzinformationen, gewohnt hervorragende Penguin-Qualität.
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Elisabet
5.0 out of 5 stars Una visión rompedora del colonialismo
Reviewed in Spain on October 3, 2022
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Es la novela menos "comercial" que pueda leerse. Reflexiva, con saltos de tiempo, introspectiva y obsesiva. Y, sin embargo, no la puedes dejar. Atrapa. Describe con sobrecogedora sinceridad el choque que supone adentrarse en un continente desconocido y los efectos de la incomunicación humana en la versión más brutal del colonialismo. Todo esto, con un estilo único, bello y rotundo. Un clásico imperdible.
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Sebastian Alvarado
1.0 out of 5 stars Mala presentación
Reviewed in Mexico on August 1, 2020
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Horrible el recorte de las hojas.
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Sebastian Alvarado
1.0 out of 5 stars Mala presentación
Reviewed in Mexico on August 1, 2020
Horrible el recorte de las hojas.
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