Heart of Darkness (Penguin Modern Classics)

224 pages

Published Feb. 24, 2000 by Penguin Books Ltd.

ISBN:: 9780141182438

(1 review)

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Charles Marlow. Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. Joseph Conrad is one of the greatest English writers, and Heart of Darkness is considered his best. His readers are brought to face our psychological selves to answer, ‘Who is the true savage?’. Originally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century’s most enduring works of fiction. Written several years after Joseph Conrad’s grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity.

51 editions

Amber Dickson reviewed Heart of Darkness (Penguin Modern Classics) by Joseph Conrad

Review of 'Heart of Darkness (Penguin Modern Classics)' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

My Bookcrossing review from February 02, 2006:

For those who aren’t aware of the fact, Heart of Darkness is the novella from which Francis Ford Coppola took his inspiration for Apocalypse Now. Seeing the film before reading the book was probably a mistake, especially when the film was so fresh in my memory, as I was struggling to find parallels between the two. Apart from the two main characters and the river, there are not a lot of obvious similarities. I actually think that Conrad and Coppola are giving us quite different messages, and that they focus on subtly different themes. I’m not much of an intellectual, so I’ll have to leave my analysis at that.

Anyway, I managed to read this one in a weekend, as it’s only 110 pages, although it wasn’t exactly a light read. Conrad’s awkward and sometimes ambiguous prose made it more of a chore …

My Bookcrossing review from February 02, 2006:

For those who aren’t aware of the fact, Heart of Darkness is the novella from which Francis Ford Coppola took his inspiration for Apocalypse Now. Seeing the film before reading the book was probably a mistake, especially when the film was so fresh in my memory, as I was struggling to find parallels between the two. Apart from the two main characters and the river, there are not a lot of obvious similarities. I actually think that Conrad and Coppola are giving us quite different messages, and that they focus on subtly different themes. I’m not much of an intellectual, so I’ll have to leave my analysis at that.

Anyway, I managed to read this one in a weekend, as it’s only 110 pages, although it wasn’t exactly a light read. Conrad’s awkward and sometimes ambiguous prose made it more of a chore than a pleasure to read. Check out this convoluted sentence: "We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign - and no memories."

The most interesting parts of the book were, for me, his descriptions of the scenery, which were quite evocative of the oppressive darkness of the jungle. I was disappointed that after the arduous journey to reach him, Kurtz doesn’t say much, and he only features for a couple of pages. The flaccid ending was also a let down. The only thing I can think of is that Conrad wanted the reader to feel the same dissatisfaction as Marlow might have felt.