Originally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century's most enduring - and harrowing - works of fiction. Written several years after Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel tells the story of Marlow, a seaman who undertakes his own journey into the African jungle to find the tormented white trader Kurtz. Rich in irony and spellbinding prose, Heart of Darkness is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity. This edition contains selections from Conrad's Congo Diary of 1890 - the first notes, in effect, for the novel, which was composed at the end of that decade. Virginia Woolf wrote of Conrad: 'His books are full of moments of vision. They light up a whole character in a flash...He could not write badly, one feels, to save his life.'
