Product Description

A story of ships and the sea and quasi-imperial adventure, and a profound exploration of courage, honour, and man's conduct in an imperfect world. Jim's single act of cowardice blights his life and the atonement he demands of himself is absolute.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #968939 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From the Publisher
The Broadview Editions series is an effort to represent the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable, lesser-known literature. Newly type-set and produced on high-quality paper in trade paperback format, the Broadview Editions series is a delight to handle as well as to read.

Each volume includes a full introduction, chronology, bibliography, and explanatory notes along with a variety of documents from the period, giving readers a rich sense of the world from which the work emerged.

About the Author
Jacques Berthoud previously edited Conrad's Almayer's Folly and The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' for OWC

Customer Reviews

One of the best
I was given this book as a teenager, and made half-hearted efforts to read in over the past twenty years but rarely got beyond the first couple of pages. I had decided on very little basis that I didn't like Conrad, that his writing was uncomfortable, old-fashioned and read like another language translated into english.

I have entirely changed my mind. Older, not neccesarily wiser, but more exposed to the world and its vageries I have fallen utterly in love with Conrad and his writing which is engaging and modern. He is the most humane of writers, capable of being moving without lapsing into sentimentality, and maps the human spirit with all its pride, nobilty, hope, optimism, youth, experience, realism, and evil. Lord Jim combines all these with the excitement of an adventure story and prose that is beautifully written. As I rush headlong towards middle-age I can see much of my past, and my changing attitudes, in the tale of Jim.

I can understand people that don't like Conrad, having been one of them myself: that has changed completely, and he is now undoubtedly my favourite author. Maybe it's akin to liking olives, or cigars, or whisky, a passion that comes with age - but it's been worth the wait.

'Lord Jim' is a novel that embodies the struggle within us.
'Lord Jim' is a book about heroism and cowardice, life and death, building and destroying and the growing up of someone who could dream yet never really attain that dream. Marlow takes us on his moral, psychological and personal journey yet again, as this book follows on from the equally brilliant 'Heart of Darkness' also by Joseph Conrad. The hopeful characters of Stein (the butterfly collector and interior trader) and Jim (the man who keeps on hoping to achieve his romantic end and re-gain his heroism) living and trying to re-build the corrupt and evil world on the Malayan Island of Patusan is both charged with conflict and emotion. With the help of Doramin and the Islanders their struggle against the evil and tyrannical Sherif Ali and Rajah Allang is full of anxieties and complications. What will happen in Jim's final struggle against Gentleman Brown, anything but a gentleman? Read 'Lord Jim' and explore the difficulties of 'How to be', and the post-colonial world of Patusan.

Tropical trading redemption
This was the second Conrad book I read after Heart of darkness.This book is longer and to me has more memorable characters.
I don't find Conrad easy to read but thats probably part of the appeal.You have to adjust yourself to his style of longer sentence and prose for his genius to be revealed.