Product Description

Heart of Darkness has been considered for most of this century as a literary classic, and also as a powerful indictment of the evils of imperialism. It reflects the savage repressions carried out in the Congo by the Belgians in one of the largest acts of genocide committed up to that time. Conrad's narrator encounters at the end of the story a man named Kurtz, dying, insane, and guilty of unspeakable atrocities.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #269 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

About the Author
Joseph Conrad was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under Tsarist autocracy. In 1874 Conrad travelled to Marseilles, where he served in French merchant vessels before joining a British ship in 1878 as an apprentice. In 1886 he obtained British nationality. Eight years later he left the sea to devote himself to writing, publishing his first novel, <I>Almayer's Folly</I>, in 1895. The following year he settled in Kent, where he produced within fifteen years such modern classics as <I>Youth, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo, The Secret Agent</I> and <I>Under Western Eyes</I>. He continued to write until his death in 1924.

Customer Reviews

Don't like a book because you think you should.
This is completely unreadable. I read A LOT and read very good books also. I thought I'd read the booklist for uni in my gap year and this was one of them. I am not looking forward to studying this book. My eyes would not stop glazing over. I fell asleep countless times reading this and it is only 110 pages long. Completely and utterly terrible.

I do feel bad because I hate this book and it seems to be regarded as 'a classic', but at least I have my own opinion. Dear god please don't feel like you should appreciate and like a book simply because 'the smart people' say you should. 90% of 'the smart people' are just copying off of everyone else in order to look well educated. Like they say "If you're not pretentious then you're not trying hard enough."

I can't believe people are claiming the style is dry!
I first read this a couple of years ago as part of an English Lit course, in which we studied in depth the language used.

The first thing to bear in mind is that this book is a product of its time. Of course there's inherent racism (Conrad's dehumanising presentation of the Africans as 'black shadows') but despite this, Heart of Darkness was an absolutely groundbreaking piece of colonial literature.

As to the style, which people have claimed is dry and unreadable (sorry that Conrad didn't have the courtesy to divide the novella into easy bitesize chapters!) it IS dense. But the language is so rich - pick out any one paragraph and you could talk about the literary techniques and the beautiful language used for hours!

The novella focuses on Marlow's journey as he approaches the 'heart of darkness' and eventually encounters the famous Kurtz. It makes social comments that would have been almost inconceivable to the readers of the colonial magazine in which it was first published, before making you, the reader, examine your own morals as it draws to its chilling conclusion.

Don't pick this up expecting a 100-page quick and easy read. But if you take the time to read this and appreciate Conrad's incredible use of the English language (not his own mother tongue!) I guarantee that you will find it worthwhile.

Intriguing but lacks in style
The concept for "Heart of Darkness" was very interesting. One man goes into the heart of the post-colonial congo to bring back a man who has lost his sanity, and critiques how these colonists treat the native Africans along the way.

But that is where it ends unfortunately, the writing style I felt was very poor, it seemed to be an ordeal more than a book and I felt my mind wondering at certain points. There were quite a few characters, but due to the size of the book (around 110 pages) Conrad seems to have decided to leave out any kind of description throughout the entire story. The overall image I got in my mind was a boat floating in darkness with a few bodiless voices on board and a load of African tribesmen dancing around in the distance.

The build-up to Kurtz was done well however, but when Marlow finally reaches him, the tension suddenly stops and thats it. We aren't revealed the apparently "unspeakable atrocities" that Kurtz has committed, and therefore I can neither relate to him or feel any kind of sympathy for him. The blurb says something along the lines that the story is a fascinating look into the darkness of human hearts when it comes to Kurtz. I did not feel this at all. All I saw was a man rolling around on a bed screaming "The horror! The horror!".

Throwing this aside, the reason I gave the story 3 out of 5 is because of the actual journey of Marlow. I felt that Conrad's take on colonialism, the look into the way that the British ran their companies, and the way that they treated the Africans (although some really horrible and moving imagery here) were very well done. So I'm being a bit lenient.

Other than that, the only thing I can say is that you should try it yourself, and see what you make of it.