New Releases by JOSEPH CONRAD

Lord Jim is a novel by Joseph Conrad originally published as a serial in Blackwood''s Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900. An early and primary event is the abandonment of a ship in distress by its crew including the young British seaman Jim. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to terms with his past. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Lord Jim 85th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Kennedy is a country doctor, and lives in Colebrook, on the shores of Eastbay. The high ground rising abruptly behind the red roofs of the little town crowds the quaint High Street against the wall which defends it from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall there curves for miles in a vast and regular sweep the barren beach of shingle, with the village of Brenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire in a clump of trees; and still further out the perpendicular column of a lighthouse, looking in the distance no bigger than a lead pencil, marks the vanishing-point of the land. The country at the back of Brenzett is low and flat, but the bay is fairly well sheltered from the seas, and occasionally a big ship, windbound or through stress of weather, makes use of the anchoring ground a mile and a half due north from you as you stand at the back door of the "Ship Inn" in Brenzett. A dilapidated windmill near by lifting its shattered arms from a mound no loftier than a rubbish heap, and a Martello tower squatting at the water''s edge half a mile to the south of the Coastguard cottages, are familiar to the skippers of small craft. These are the official seamarks for the patch of trustworthy bottom represented on the Admiralty charts by an irregular oval of dots enclosing several figures six, with a tiny anchor engraved among them, and the legend "mud and shells" over all.

Joseph Conrad''s novel "The Secret Agent" is referred to in many places as the prototype of today''s political and espionage thrillers. The agent of the title, Mr. Verloc, has grown complacent in his role as an informant to a foreign embassy in London and is pressured by his superiors into pulling off a shocking act of terrorism in order to prove his worth to his colleagues. "The Secret Agent" is mostly about the domestic repercussions that occur when things go badly wrong. Joseph Conrad effectively toys with the reader''s expectations, introducing several characters and sets the stage for what appears to be a thriller with political overtones: several people have a vested interest (personally or politically) in the outcome of Mr. Verloc''s actions. What "The Secret Agent" does well is give its reader a deliciously tangible sense of the seedy underworld at play in late 19th-century London. Joseph Conrad personifies the mist, funk and squalor of London until the city itself nearly becomes a character in the action. Also, for anyone who maybe knows Conrad for being an obtuse, thick writer (especially if your previous knowledge of him comes from reading "Heart of Darkness" and "Lord Jim"), "The Secret Agent" is refreshingly straight forward.

Joseph Conrad''s Lord Jim (1900) is one of his masterworks. It deals with an individual''s fight to escape his past and his efforts to prove his courage to the world after once discrediting himself. Jim''s cowardice changes his life forever when he joins a group of officials who flee a sinking ship leaving all the passengers to drown.

Selected by the Modern Library as two of the 100 best novels of all time Nostromo Originally published in 1904, Nostromo is considered by many to be Conrad''s supreme achievement. Set in the imaginary South American republic of Costaguana, the novel reveals the effects of unbridled greed and imperialist interests on many different lives. Although each character''s potential for good is ultimately corrupted, Nostromo underscores Conrad''s belief in fidelity, moral discipline, and the need for human communion. The author himself described the book as ''an intense creative effort on what I suppose will remain my largest canvas.'' ''Conrad endeavored to create a great, massive, multiphase symbol that would render his total vision of the world, his sense of individual destiny, his sense of man''s place in nature, his sense of history and society,'' observed Robert Penn Warren. ''Nostromo is the most strikingly modern of Conrad''s novels,'' said V. S. Pritchett. ''It is pervaded by a profound, even morbid sense of insecurity which is the very spirit of our age.'' This volume is the companion to the acclaimed multipart series aired on Masterpiece Theatre. Lord Jim Lord Jim is a classic story of one man''s tragic failure and eventual redemption, told under the circumstances of high adventure at the margins of the known world which made Conrad''s work so immediately popular. But it is also the book in which its author, through a brilliant adaptation of his stylistic apparatus to his obsessive moral, psychological and political concerns, laid the groundwork for the modern novel as we know it.

The story of Marlow travelling upriver in central Africa to find Kurtz, an ivory agent as consumed by the horror of human life as he is by physical illness, has long been considered a classic, and continues to be widely read and studied. This edition, edited by one of the leading figures in ‘the Conrad controversy,’ includes an introduction and explanatory notes, as well as a fascinating variety of contemporary documents that help to set this extraordinary work in the context of the period from which it emerged. The introduction and bibliography have been updated, and two new appendices have been added; the second of these is a selection of Alice Harris’s extraordinary but little-known photographs documenting the horrors of colonialism in turn-of-the-century Congo.

Generally regarded as the pre-eminent work of Conrad''s shorter fiction, ''Heart of Darkness'' is a chilling tale of horror which, as the author intended, is capable of many interpretations.