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  • Published: 22 June 1994
  • ISBN: 9781857151442
  • Imprint: Everyman
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $35.00

Victory

An Island Tale




Conrad's last great novel, featuring one of his most fascinating heroes, Victory is a psychological thriller, a tragic romance and a commentary on the lies that we tell ourselves.

3et in the Malay Archipelago, where Conrad spent much of his youth as an officer in the British Merchant Navy, VICTORY is a sombre yet brilliant study of good and evil in Conrad's mature manner. The characteristic theme of a man reaching out from his apparently total solitude in sympathy for another human being is explored through the story of Axel Heyst's attempt to rescue a girl from the machinations of a brutal gang. Conrad's extraordinary blend of moral profundity, pathos and bitter irony is conjured up in prose which is at once atmospheric and inimitable. The book is published to coincided with the film staring Rufus Sewell Sam Neill, William Defoe and Irene Jacob

  • Published: 22 June 1994
  • ISBN: 9781857151442
  • Imprint: Everyman
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $35.00

Other books in the series

On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Joseph Conrad

Józef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski was born in the Ukraine on 3 December 1857. His parents were Polish and had both died in exile by the time Conrad was eleven. His uncle then became his guardian and looked after him in Krakow until he was sixteen when he went to sea and sailed on French and British ships. He was made British citizen in 1886 and changed his name to Joseph Conrad. In 1889 Conrad visited the Congo and his experiences there inspired Heart of Darkness. In 1894 he published his first novel, Almayer's Folly and went on to write nineteen more as well as many short stories, essays and a memoir. In 1896 he married Jessie George and they later had two sons. Conrad died on 3 August 1924.

Joseph Conrad (originally Józef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski) was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under Tsarist autocracy. His parents, ardent Polish patriots, died when he was a child, following their exile for anti-Russian activities, and he came under the protection of his tradition-conscious uncle, Thaddeus Bobrowski, who watched over him for the next twenty-five years.

In 1874 Bobrowski conceded to his nephew's passionate desire to go to sea, and Conrad travelled to Marseilles, where he served in French merchant vessels before joining a British ship in 1878 as an apprentice.

In 1886 he obtained British nationality and his Master's certificate in the British Merchant Service. Eight years later he left the sea to devote himself to writing, publishing his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1895. The following year he married Jessie George and eventually settled in Kent, where he produced within fifteen years such modern classics as Youth, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo, The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes.

He continued to write until his death in 1924. Today Conrad is generally regarded as one of the greatest writers of fiction in English - his third language. He once described himself as being concerned 'with the ideal value of things, events and people'; in the Preface to The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' he defined his task as 'by the power of the written word ... before all, to make you see'.

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