Heart of Darkness

By: Joseph Conrad

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 4 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's Summary

Horror awaits Marlow, a seaman assigned by an ivory company to retrieve a cargo boat and one of its employees, Mr. Kurtz, who is stranded in the heart of the Africa, deep in the Belgian Congo.

Marlow's journey up the brooding dark river soon becomes a struggle to maintain his own sanity as he witnesses the brutalization of the natives by white traders and discovers the enigmatic Mr. Kurtz.

Kurtz, once a genius and the company's most successful representative, has become a savage. His compound is decorated by a row of human heads mounted on spears. The demonic mastermind, liberated from the conventions of European culture, has traded his soul to become ruler of his own horrific dominion.

Acclaimed as one of the great, albeit disturbing, visionary works of Western civilization, Conrad's haunting tale dramatizes the stark realities of Africa in the colonial period. Heart of Darkness reflects the physical and psychological tragedies Conrad experienced while working in the Belgian Congo in 1890 and is the basis of Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now.

To supplement this reading of Heart of Darkness, listen to The SparkNotes Guide to Heart of Darkness.

Public Domain (P)2002 Tantor Media, Inc.

Classic Book Ruined by Scott Brick

The narration of this novel is intolerably bad. Scott Brick employs a transparently fake, inconsistent and downright comical accent throughout the book. Coupled by his typical overly dramatic interpretation and excessively sing-songy cadence, it is nearly impossible to focus on the actual substance of the book. Mr. Brick appears to be a narrator that listeners either love or hate. I have tolerated his narration (just barely) on a few non-fiction books and this was my first attempt to listen to him narrate fiction. I can say without any reservation that I will never purchase another book narrated by Mr. Brick. I fail to understand why he receives any accolades for his narration or why any author would allow their work to be narrated by a narrator who provokes such strong reactions, both positive and negative, from listeners. There are five other versions of this book on Audible, narrated by others -- I regret not purchasing any of those other versions instead of this version and suggest you not make the same mistake.

terrible narration

The narrator's accent keeps going in and out. It's actually confusing--you lose track of who's talking. Marlow should have a cockney-type accent, but it only holds up for about half a sentence.

Apocalypse Don't

One of my favorite movies and they always say "the book was better" so I was excited to get this... But... I don't know if it was the reading or the story, but I was so bored. I don't even remember much about it, I couldn't pay attention