Showing results by author "Joseph Conrad" in All Categories

Our agent, a man named Mr Verloc, minds his own business while he keeps his shop in London's Soho, alongside his wife, who attends to her aged mother and disabled brother. Their lives are turned upside down when Verloc is reluctantly employed to plant a bomb and destroy an observatory in London. What was once the perfect bomb plot inevitably turns awry and Verloc, his family and his associates are forced to face the consequences.

When the new captain takes over command of his first ship for the homeward voyage from the Gulf of Siam, he surprises his crew by taking the first nightwatch himself. While alone on deck he is surprised to find a lone swimmer in the sea who comes on board. The stranger is a murderer escaping justice, but is also eerily an almost exact doppelganger of the captain himself. Not only does he look identical, but the two almost seem to share the same thoughts and secrets. Rather than turn his fugitive-double over to the authorities, the captain hides him in his own cabin.

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....

This classic precursor to the modern-day spy novel was recently in headlines when it was revealed that the Unabomber drew considerable inspiration from its prophetic portrait of terrorism. Written in 1907 and set in Edwardian London, The Secret Agent resonates just as strongly in today's world, where a handful of fanatics can still play mad politics and victimize the innocent.

Nostromo is a colorful and adventurous tale set in the fictional South American country of Costaguana. In the midst of a revolution, the citizens of Costaguana live under a brutal dictatorship of Ribiera, a ruthless leader kept in power through foreigners and their dark money. The oligarch government has become so corrupt that the citizens of Costaguana have had enough. In fear of losing his wealth, Charles Gould, the leader of a wealthy family, asks Nostromo for help in getting his vast silver fortune out of the city.

Relish the wonders of Classic Literature in B.J. Harrison’s second season of The Classic Tales Podcast. Experience more of the greatest fiction ever written, as it comes to life in this unprecedented audiobook. Adventure from Jack London and Edgar Rice Burroughs, gothic suspense from Wilkie Collins and Edgar Allan Poe, humor from Mark Twain and P.G. Wodehouse - this collection has it all, complete and unabridged.

A través de un personaje ficticio (el viejo marinero "Marlow"), Conrad describe una travesía por el río Congo en busca del señor "Kurtz" que es el jefe de una explotación de marfil. El encuentro con Kurtz, será la confirmación de la hipócrita actitud colonialista y pone en tela de juicio su carácter de cruzada moral y comercial. El director de cine Francis Ford Coppola se basó en este breve relato para su película Apocalypse Now, que si bien estaba ambientada en la guerra de Vietnam, mantenía el espíritu del relato de Conrad.

An unsettling tale of plague, drift and terror, The Shadow-Line documents a young seaman’s coming of age after he is recruited to captain a ship for the first time. Bad luck and disease haunt the inexperienced hero and his crew, and the evil legacy of the previous captain overshadows them with a feeling of supernatural menace.

Victory is the story of a loner who believes that the best way to avoid life's pain and pitfalls is to distance himself from others. In spite of his misgivings, Axel Heyst agrees to manage a coal company on a remote island. When the company eventually fails, he again turns his back on people and society, more convinced than ever that his original philosophy was right.

Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad's novel of political treachery and oppression, of betrayal, guilt, and intrigue, begins with a bomb that kills its intended target, a hated Russian minister of police, along with a number of innocent bystanders. A young student named Razumov hides the perpetrator, then betrays him and becomes a spy among his exiled comrades. He faces a moral dilemma from which there is no escape.

"Youth" is an autobiographical short story by Joseph Conrad. It was written in 1898, first published in Blackwood's Magazine, and included as the first story in the 1902 volume "Youth, a Narrative, and Two Other Stories". The volume also included "Heart of Darkness" and "The End of the Tether", which are concerned with maturity and old age, respectively. "Youth" depicts a young man's first journey to the East.

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.

In “A Smile of Fortune”, a ship’s captain meets the seemingly genial Mr. Jacobus and his irritable brother while embarking in the tropics. One a respectable businessman with a considerable reputation, the other a confessed rogue and entrepreneur with no reputation left to lose, the captain is at a loss to determine which he should befriend. In this masterly tale of misplaced loyalty, family feuds, and illicit bargaining, the captain finds himself the unwitting partner in a deeply unorthodox transaction.

Jim is a young and naive clerk on a cargo ship plying Asian waters. He harbors romantic fantasies of adventure and heroism that are promptly scuttled one night when the ship collides with an obstacle and begins to sink. Stripped of his seaman's license, convinced of his own cowardice, Jim sets out on a tragic and transcendent search for redemption.

Born in 1857 in Poland, Joseph Conrad became a British citizen just before he turned 30. In the intervening years he lost both parents, becoming an orphan at 11, being thereafter raised by an uncle, who let the boy go to Marseille, where he began to work on merchant ships. At age 36 his life turned from one of ships to one of literary pursuit. Conrad brought to English literature both a fresh layer of style and a deeper examination of the human psyche in a wealth of works. In this audiobook we dwell among his numerous short stories.

One of Joseph Conrad's most haunting sea-stories, describing a haunting life or death decision at sea which is made in a moment... and takes a lifetime to doubt it's wisdom.

As the Revolution rages in France, a seafarer named Peyrol, a master-gunner in the French republican navy, pirate, and for nearly 50 years, rover of the outer seas, comes to the end of a lifetime lived on the seas and seeks refuge in a remote farmhouse on the French Riviera. As he attempts to settle into a peaceful existence, Peyrol struggles to redefine himself and returns to the sea for one final voyage.

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

The Secret Agent was one of the first espionage novels ever written, and it is certainly one of the finest in the oeuvre of Joseph Conrad. The story concerns the attempt by a group of back-alley revolutionaries to destroy one of London's most famous landmarks and thereby set off a revolution.

An eclectic compendium of the finest short fiction of the last 150 years, featuring works by Paul Theroux, Joseph Conrad, James Ellroy, Ambrose Bierce, Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Aldous Huxley, Philip Roth, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.