Heart of Darkness

by Ralph Cosham (Narrated by)

Overview

Horror awaits Marlow, a seaman assigned by an ivory company to retrieve a cargo boat and one of its employees, Mr. Kurtz who is stranded in the heart of the Africa, deep in the Belgian Congo. Marlow's journey up the brooding dark river soon becomes a struggle to maintain his own sanity as he witnesses the brutalization of the natives by white traders and discovers the enigmatic Mr. Kurtz. Kurtz, once a genius and the company's most successful representative, has become a savage. His compound is decorated by a row of human heads mounted on spears. The demonic mastermind, liberated from the conventions of European culture, has traded his soul to become ruler of his own horrific dominion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2000003480739
Publisher:	Sound Room Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	01/25/2005
Series:	Classic Adventure in Audio
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Joseph Conrad was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, on December 3, 1857, in Russian-occupied Poland. His father, who was fighting for Polish independence, wrote a poem asking his son to remain "without land or love" as long as Poland was enslaved. Conrad went to sea at sixteen and and served fifteen years aboard English ships. He became the captain of his own ships, sailing to Asia and Africa. He took up writing at the age of 32. It did not come easy: English was his fourth language after Polish, Russian and French, but he wrote with depth and beauty seldom matched. He was offered knighthood, but declined. He died August 3, 1924.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
A Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
Joseph Conrad: A Brief Chronology
A Congo Chronology
Author’s Note (Preface to the 1923 edition of Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories)
Heart of Darkness
Appendix A: Comments by Conrad
1. Conrad, from "Geography and Some Explorers"
2. From Conrad’s Congo Diary
3. Letter to Madame Poradowska
4. Conversations with Conrad as recollected by Edward Garnett
5. Letter to William Blackwood, 31 December 1898
6. Letter to R.B. Cunninghame Graham, 8 February 1899
7. Letter to William Blackwood, 31 May 1902
8. Letter to Elsie Hueffer, 3 December 1902
9. Letter to Edward Garnett, 22 December
Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews of Heart of Darkness
1. Edward Garnett, Unsigned review (from Academy and Literature, 6 December 1902)
2. Hugh Clifford, "The Art of Mr. Joseph Conrad" (from The Spectator, 29 November 1902)
3. Unsigned review, "Mr. Conrad's New Book" (from Manchester Guardian, 10 December 1902)
4. Unsigned review, "Youth" (from The Times Literary Supplement, 12 December 1902)
5. Unsigned review (from Athenaeum, 20 December 1902)
6. Unsigned review, "Some Stories by Joseph Conrad" (from New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art, 4 April 1903)
7. Unsigned review (from The Monthly Review, 7 April 1903)
Appendix C: Historical Documents
1. Henry M. Stanley Finding Livingstone
2. Excerpts from Stanley’s Diaries: The Second Central African Expedition, 1874-1877
3. Excerpts from the Diaries of William G. Stairs: The "Emin Pasha" Congo Expedition with Stanley
4. Stanley on the Congo
5. Stanley on his Career
6. Advertising Announcement
7. Henry Morton Stanley, speech on being given the freedom of the city of Swansea
8. Stanley, speech at a dinner given in his honour by the Lotos Club in New York on 27 November 1886
9. Cecil Rhodes, from speech on 18 July 1899 at Cape Town
10. Joseph Chamberlain, from speech on 11 November 1895
11. W.M. Thackeray on the Race Question
12. D. Crawford, F.R.G.S. (Konga Vantu)
13. From Benjamin Kidd
14. From Roger Casement’s Congo Report
15. E.D. Morel on Belgian Colonialism in the Congo
16. Mark Twain on King Leopold
17. Letter from George Gissing to his brother Algernon, 23 January 1885
18. Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745-97): Benin in Pre-Colonial Times
19. Commander R.H. Bacon, Intelligence Officer to the Benin Expedition
20. Captain Alan Boisragon, One of the Two Survivors, Commandant of the Niger Coast Protectorate Force
Appendix D: Major Textual Changes
Appendix E. Illustrations
Appendix F: The Photographs of Alice Harris
Appendix G: Map of the Congo

Editorial Reviews

"[This edition is] far better than anything else on the market today."

Craig Keating Langara College

"This edition offers a bold and intelligent introduction to the book's aesthetic and philosophical challenges, gives an excitingly useful chronology of the Congo with excerpts from Congo exploration literature, and deftly anticipates issues that discussion of the text will raise."

Conradiana - David Leon Higdon

"Goonetilleke's edition does much to restore the context [in which Conrad was writing] and begins with a helpful summary of Congo history. The edition contains excerpts from some of the best writers in English on conditions in the Congo Free State."

The Times Literary Supplement

"This edition offers a bold and intelligent introduction to the book's aesthetic and philosophical challenges, gives an excitingly useful chronology of the Congo with excerpts from Congo exploration literature, and deftly anticipates issues that discussion of the text will raise."
— David Leon Higdon

Conradiana

"Evenhanded…it connects Conrad palpably to the European colonization of the continent."

Harper's Magazine

'‘One of the most compelling and influential works of English literature in the last century.’'  —Independent

"Conrad's narrative arsenal is awesome . . . Conrad deals in profundities if he deals in anything, but it is just his ability to clip his own wings in midflight, to puncture his ponderously magnificent dirigibles, that make him such an impressive literary performer."  —Sunday Times

"Demands to be read."  —Guardian

"Conrad broadened the descriptive range of the English language (his glowing and luxuriant delight in words, the haunting decor of the tropics, all that maritime terminology) more than any of his contemporaries."  —Independent

From the Publisher