Lord Jim & Nostromo de Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim & Nostromo

Joseph Conrad

Selected by the Modern Library as two of the 100 best novels of all time

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT D. KAPLAN
COMMENTARY BY VIRGINIA WOOLF, HAROLD BLOOM, EDWARD SAID,
F. R. LEAVIS, AND ROBERT PENN WARREN

Never were Mr. Conrad's felicity of phrase and charm of atmosphere more obvious. . . . A book of the rare literary quality of Lord Jim is something to receive with gratitude and joy.--The New York Times

Originally published in 1900, Lord Jim is one of Joseph Conrad's most complex literary masterpieces. The story of a young sailor whose moment of cowardice haunts him for the rest of his life, Lord Jim explores Conrad's lifelong obsessions with the nature of guilt and the possibility of redemption.
Nostromo is considered by many to be Conrad's supreme achievement, and Conrad himself referred to Nostromo as his widest canvas. Set in the fictitious South American republic of Costaguana, Nostromo reveals the effects that misguided idealism, unparalleled greed, and imperialist interests can have on a fledging nation. V. S. Pritchett wrote: Nostromo is the most strikingly modern of Conrad's novels. It is pervaded by a profound, even morbid sense of insecurity which is the very spirit of our age.
Robert D. Kaplan's Introduction explains why the two novels together form Conrad's darkest glimpse into the flawed nature of humankind.

JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924) grew up amid political unrest in Russian-occupied Poland. After twenty years at sea in the French and British merchant navies, he settled in England in 1894. Over the next three decades, he revolutionized the English novel with works such as Youth (1902), Heart of Darkness (1902), Typhoon (1903), The Secret Agent (1907), Under Western Eyes (1911), Chance (1913), and Victory (1915).

ROBERT D. KAPLAN is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and the author of seven books of travel and foreign affairs that have been translated into a dozen languages, including Balkan Ghosts, The Ends of the Earth, and An Empire Wilderness, all bestsellers, and a collection of essays, The Coming Anarchy. He lectures frequently to the U.S. military.

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Joseph Conrad (1857 - 1924) was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. He joined the British merchant marine in 1878, and was granted British citizenship in 1886. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an impassive, inscrutable universe. Conrad is considered an early modernist, though his works still contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced numerous authors and many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, his works. Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew on his native Poland's national experiences and his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world-including imperialism and colonialism-and that profoundly explore the human psyche.