An Immense Darkness: The Fiction of Joseph Conrad

Brooding, indirect, and elliptical, Joseph Conrad took the adventure story and turned it inward, creating interior journeys for his protagonists that are laced with symbolism and pessimism. In so doing, he created a bridge from Victorian Realism to Modernism and brought the English Novel into the 20th Century. He wrote in a language not his own - English (which was his third language behind Polish and French) - yet he became a superb stylist. Both fascinated and appalled by the things he had seen during his years as a merchant seaman and a ship's master, Conrad strove to illuminate the darkness in all of us and by so doing, confront the baffling uncertainty of the Modern age. Here are his 20 novels ( two written with Ford Madox Ford) and seven representative stories.