Joseph Conrad

"Nostromo, A Tale of the Seaboard" is set in the South American country of Costaguana, and more specifically in that country's Occidental Province and its port city of Sulaco. Though Costaguana is a fictional nation, its geography as described in the book resembles real-life Colombia. Costaguana has a long history of tyranny, revolution and warfare, but has recently experienced a period of stability under the dictator Ribiera. Charles Gould is a native...

A new captain must lead his crew to safety and face his own internal struggles as he works to overcome disrespect, insanity, and coming-of-age all while sailing on an unforgiving sea. There is an invisible line that divides life into a before and after-adolescence and adulthood. The unnamed narrator of The Shadow Line is painfully aware of this, but is unsure where the line lies in his life. He recalls a number of rash decisions he has made, some...

Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars • Biographies of the authors • Chronologies of contemporary...

A novel of naval life in Napoleonic France. After forty years of piracy on Eastern seas, Citizen Peyrol returns to his native France, a country now ravaged and scarred by revolution and war. Looking for peace in which to end his days, he withdraws to a safe harbor in a remote farmhouse on Escampobar Peninsula, which looks out to the distant Mediterranean, where the lovely Arlette lives with her aunt and the revolutionary Scevola. But the arrival of...

Captain Tom Lingard is on his way to help his friends, a Malay prince and princess, reclaim their stolen land when he gets distracted by a marooned yacht. Lingard feels obliged to help his fellow Europeans out of their plight - and he's increasingly attracted to Edith Travers, the married woman on board - but his rescue of the pleasure boat and its passengers plunges the captain deep into a dangerous vortex of local politics.One of Conrad's less familiar...

Young Flora de Barral, is the daughter of a man whose sudden bankruptcy and conviction, have forced her to face a harsh and uncertain reality. Chance is a clever examination of risk and the impact of unforeseen circumstance. Chance features Conrad's signature narration as it describes the experiences of major and minor characters, including Flora de Barral. She is a young woman who has suffered the consequences of her father's many misdeeds. This...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.The Arrow of Gold is Joseph Conrad's most romantic novel, literally a cloak-and-dagger tale set in the French port of Marseilles and the adjacent "sea of classic adventures." The principal characters are Monsieur George, a young sailor ready for love and adventure, and Doña Rita, a young woman of extraordinary wealth and beauty haunted by a mysterious threat. Supporters...

Chance (1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is "like a beggar, without a right to anything but compassion." After her bankrupt father is imprisoned, she learns the harsh fact that a woman in her position "has no resources but in herself." Her only means of action is to be what she is. Flora's...

Written at various times, 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 eighteenth-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 humour of The Partner. The form of the stories...