Heart of Darkness Paperback – 29 Nov. 2014

Review is for this edition, not the novel itself. Buy a different version. This one contains some misspellings and grammatical errors. None of the paragraphs are indented, which I found distracting and removed me from the reading experience to a small degree. The cover looks cheaply made. The image on the front cover is visibly pixelated. Both the spine and back cover are blank, without text, which is rather irritating if you want to be able to find it again in your bookshelves.

Not a good copy. Not about the story just the edition. Flimsy with lots of printing errors. Cheaply done. Look elsewhere for a better edition.

A really good read, which was recommended to me by a friend. Quite thought-provoking given one of the many themes is the morality of lying. I enjoyed it very much and would recommend to anyone!

Owen Knowles, in an excellent introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of this 1899 Conrad novel, cites T. S. Eliot as saying that the work's path-finding significance lies in its use of a simulated nightmare-quest by which to dramatise the relationship between self and the modern world. What Conrad does is to enact that quest through the dislocating voice of a narrator, Marlow, who tells the story from a boat, the 'Nellie', 'upon the lower reaches of the Thames'.Looking beyond, there is the 'monstrous town' which 'has also been one of the dark places of the earth.' What London was during the nineteenth-century, the metropolitan hub of corporate capitalism and colonial power, is injected with all its malignant psychological manifestations into the heart of the Congo, where Marlow confronts the object of his quest, tradesman, ivory hunter, former painter, poet, musician, philosopher, a man called Kurtz. His metamorphosis into a grotesquely elongated and emaciated form in the heart of the Congolese jungle is the culmination of a nightmare writing back into the heart of Empire.Chinua Achebe's criticism of the book that the implied 'darkness' of the novel is African in its origins carries some weight, but Conrad's personal animus, after bouts of dysentery and malaria as a merchant seaman in West Africa in the 1880s, is aimed at the degenerative power of imperial rule, its moral hypocrisy and brutal capitalist intervention across Africa. The nightmares endured by captives of that domination were, ironically, also the nightmares of its instigators, among whom Kurtz becomes its most savage incarnation.Conrad plunges us in to a labyrinth of ever-shifting prose patterns, metaphors of decay and human degradation, but never provides a full sense of the real purpose of Marlow's journey other than, as Harlequin discovers, a chance to experience first-hand Kurtz's eloquence. But his articulations are broken and fragmented and belong to Eliot's post-war Modernist mindset, rather than the culminating utterances of the colonial project. They make for disturbing and frustrating reading, as one never picks up a sense of things being done or accomplished; every movement forward along the river is a moment of regress into disillusionment and despair. Whatever is pulsing there in the heart of one of Conrad's most prescient novels would surface fifteen years later in the Great War and the debris of a lost generation. But the bodies were piling up, the novel implies, along the banks of the Congo long before.

I recently re-read this - it's not my favourite Conrad (Lord Jim or Youth are higher on that list) but as a piece of work, it retains its power because the key themes are as relevant today as when it was written. For me, Heart of Darkness is a great story but it's often suffered by being a popular set text in schools and understanding Conrad's attitudes towards racism, colonialism etc need some context.Conrad came from the Polish aristocracy that dominated the Ukraine whilst also resenting Russian control of the former Poland (thus managing to be both oppressed and oppressor). At 16, he moved to an unknown country (France) to enroll in the Merchant Navy and enter a profession that was largely solitary, always wandering and rootless. He didn't even learn English until his late 20s. That sense of straddling different worlds permeates his writing and is revealed by his constant use of third party narration in his work.When he wrote this, a key justification for colonialism was bringing the 'benefits' of civilization to those genetically incapable of doing this on their own (Scientific Racism). Protecting the colonized was thus both necessary and desirable, so the European annexation of Africa was a moral crusade to 'save' Africans from Arab slavers and bring them the benefits of Christianity. The Congo Free State was 'awarded' to Leopold of Belgium in 1885 as a 'protectorate' after an utterly hypocritical campaign based on these arguments.Heart of Darkness exposes the hypocrisy of these assumptions; the Europeans in this story are not 'protecting' the natives but exploiting them. Who 'corrupts' who? If being 'civilized' is a genetic trait, how do you explain Kurtz? It's a thin line that separates the 'civilized' versus the 'primitive.' The alien nature of the environment Marlow experiences as he journeys up the river is echoed in the behaviours of those he encounters. The idea that civilization is genetic is thus shown to be a fallacy; the darkness exists within us, regardless of race or culture and it is that realization which sends Kurtz mad.Unusually, Conrad's conclusion comes at the beginning, not the end (which is why so many ignore it). Marlow, looking out over the Thames, starts his story by saying 'And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth.' He goes on to talk about the Romans and their conquest of Britain;'They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force; nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind, as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it.' All the issues Conrad identifies are very real and present today - that's why it's still an important work.

This is an odd A5 size edition of the book which has a very poor editing throughout and virtually no indentations for the paragraphs. Overall it makes it very difficult to read and certainly not worth the money paid for it.

one of the very few books I just gave up on , didn`t even skim until the end.

Did not like the publishing, it is not a proper book.