Showing results by author "Joseph Conrad" in All Categories

"A weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares." This is how Marlowe describes his journey into the Belgian Congo. And while Europeans go mad, Corporations turn tyrannous, and the legend of a great Ivory hunter is dangled before him, Marlowe observes everything with a keen eye, as we journey with him, into the Heart of Darkness. This audiobook also includes another short story featuring Marlowe, "Youth".

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is an exploration of the nature of evil and how far a man can go towards it when released from the constraints of what can be called civilisation. Before beginning his life as a writer at the age of 36, Conrad spent 16 years as a merchant seaman. In 1889 he became captain of a steamboat in the Congo Free State, and the atrocities he witnessed there, perpetrated by the representatives of the Belgian colonial powers, led him to write what he called his Congo Diary.

Lord Jim is considered by many to be one of the greatest novels published in the 20th century. At its core, Lord Jim is a story of conscience and what can happen if one forgets one's honor and turns one's back on one's fellow man.

Charles Marlow, sails up the Congo River to meet with Kurtz a prosperous ivory trader and a man of great abilities. Marlow ends up signing a contract and becoming a riverboat captain for a Belgian company that trades in the Congo. He hopes that this contract will give him a good opportunity for career development. However, Marlows expectations quickly sour as he is faced with the evil of imperialism, witnessing violent acts and brutality against the local, native population.

"Napoleon I., whose career had the quality of a duel against the whole of Europe, disliked duelling between the officers of his army. The great military emperor was not a swashbuckler, and had little respect for tradition. Nevertheless, a story of duelling, which became a legend in the army, runs through the epic of imperial wars. To the surprise and admiration of their fellows, two officers, like insane artists trying to gild refined gold or paint the lily, pursued a private contest through the years of universal carnage."

First published in 1902, Heart of Darkness has clearly earned its place in literary history. The story is based on Conrad’s personal experiences in Central Africa and closely parallels many of the events that occurred while he worked his way up the Congo River, and back, on a steam wheeler. Those events inspired him to create characters and a story line that deals with the early greedy exploitation of the Congo by the Europeans, in this case, through the ivory trade.

This audiobook is a new edition of Joseph Conrad's classic tale of terror along the Congo River, Heart of Darkness. Named one of the 100 best English novels by Modern Library. This audiobook is expertly narrated by Marcus Freeman.

Today, we're likely to react to the title of this novella, on whose 'sincerity of expression' Conrad was willing to stake his artisitic reputation, with visceral disgust. There is a sad irony in this, for Conrad's title originally alluded to a rather complex set of meanings, implying that, by virtue of our human nature, we all carry within the fragile vessel that is our idealised image of ourselves a darker being we find troubling, even despicable, but with whom we must eventually come to terms.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads this Joseph Conrad classic tale of two white traders, Carlier and Kayerts, comical and pathetic, who move from polite society to the Congo, where they hope to become wealthy on the "Dark Continent" by spreading commerce and civilization to black Africa. But as was often the case, the longer they are away from civilization, the more the refinements of civilization slip away, along with their sanity.

The Nigger of the Narcissus: A Tale of the Forecastle (1897; also subtitled A Tale of the Sea and published in the US as The Children of the Sea) is a novella by Joseph Conrad. Because of its quality compared to earlier works, some have described it as marking the start of Conrad's major, or middle, period; others have placed it as the best work of his early, or first, period. This is the first professionally recorded and produced audiobook version of this work.

One of seven of these 'unmade movies' available on audio, Victory is a dark, morally complex drama set in the Dutch East Indies in 1900. It tells the story of Baron Heyst, a mysterious Swedish recluse living alone on a deserted island whose life is changed forever when he visits a neighbouring island and falls in love with young English violinist Lena. Pursued by predatory older men, Lena is drawn to Heyst and escapes with him to his island retreat....  

Exposing the tense relations between white colonists and African natives, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad explores the history of European colonialism in Africa, which has been known for many reasons as the Dark Continent. The book is framed as a story that is being recounted, focusing on a sailor named Marlow who is employed by an ivory trading company, known simply as the Company.

This classic tale, set in the jungle of the Belgian Congo, tells the story of Marlow's search for the powerful and possibly deranged Kurtz, in an atmosphere of evil. This novel was later adapted and updated by Francis Ford Coppola as his film Apocalypse Now.

A superb collection of classic ghost stories from the world's great storytellers. 1. "Lot No. 249" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 2. "The Phantom Rickshaw" by Rudyard Kipling. 3. "The Haunted Dolls’ House" by M. R James. 4. "Ligeia" by Edgar Allan Poe. 5. "The Monkey’s Paw" by W. W. Jacobs. 6. "The Finest Story in the World" by Rudyard Kipling. 7. "The Apparition of Mrs. Veal" by Daniel Defoe. 8. "Metzengerstein" by Edgar Allan Poe. 9. "They" by Rudyard Kipling. 10. "Labadoyere’s Doom" by Lord Halifax. 11. "Lost in a Pyramid" by Louisa May Alcott. And more...

En 1906 un acontecimiento real, el intento de volar el Observatorio de Greenwich por parte de un anarquista llamado Martial Bourdin, inspiró a Joseph Conrad el tema de un relato magistral. Sobre el telón de fondo del Londres de comienzos de siglo, una ciudad monstruosa e indiferente, se desarrolla la historia de un fallido atentado que revela el turbio entramado formado por el terrorismo internacional, la acción de la policía y la diplomacia deshonesta.

Written at various times and under various influences, the four stories contained in Within the Tides are linked by Conrad's treatment of loyalty and betrayal. They range in setting from the Far East via 18th-century Spain to England. The tone shifts from the tragic inevitability of "The Planter of Malata" and the pathos of "Because of the Dollars" to the gothic "The Inn of the Two Witches" and the grim humor of "The Partner." Experimental in form, they represent yet another branch of Conrad's search for moral truth.

A wonderful anthology of fifteen of the great classic Novellas. 1. Immensee by Theodor Storm 2. The Jew's Beech Tree by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff 3. The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad 4. The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy 5. Mad Monkton by Wilkie Collins 6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 7. The Lifted Veil by George Eliot 8. England my England by D. H. Lawrence

Henry Whalley is a true sailor, earning years of experience as a ship’s captain before his retirement. Faced with unexpected financial problems and a desire to help his married daughter earn her place in the world, Whalley is forced to sell his boat and buy his way back into service on a trade vessel. But Whalley is living so close to financial ruin that any small deviation from his course will put him over the edge . . . The End of the Tether is one of the many books that author Joseph Conrad wrote about sailors and the sea.

Charles Marlow is a steamboat captain on the River Thames near Gravesend, England. He and his crew work for an ivory trading company. One day he recounts to his fellow crew the story of his life and how he became a captain for the steamboat company. The focus of his story involves the journey Marlow undertook to the outer reaches of the company's operations. Here he tells of his wild encounters with Mr. Kurtz, a man with a great reputation for bringing in the most ivory for the company.

A fascinating collection of tales from some of Great Britain's finest classic authors.