Heart of Darkness

188 pages

English language

Published April 27, 2003

ISBN:
978-1-892295-49-1
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Goodreads:
4900

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3 stars (21 reviews)

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad. It tells the story of Charles Marlow, a sailor who takes on an assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in the African interior. The novel is widely regarded as a critique of European colonial rule in Africa, whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and morality. Although Conrad does not name the river where the narrative takes place, at the time of writing the Congo Free State, the location of the large and economically important Congo River, was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is given a text by Kurtz, an ivory trader working on a trading station far up the river, who has "gone native" and is the object of Marlow's expedition. Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between "civilised people" and "savages." …

13 editions

Review of 'Heart of Darkness' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Conflicting feelings about this book.

There's a lot that I did like about it. I liked the story and the meandering structure of it.

I liked the darkness of it.

I liked how dammit it was of colonialism.

But I did not enjoy the writing style very much. I felt overwhelmingly like I didn't know who was saying what, who they were saying it to, what they were referring to.

This feeling grew more and more as the book went on and I suppose that's more or less the point isn't it - that we're feeling the descent into the madness of the narrator. But it was just a challenging read for me, and without enough reward to pay off the effort.

I really wanted to like this book. It's a classic isn't it? You're supposed to like it. Everyone talks about how great it is. But I just couldn't …

Review of 'Cuore di tenebra' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Puoi trovare questa recensione anche sul mio blog, La siepe di more

Cosa può dire Cuore di tenebra a unǝ lettorǝ oggi? Cosa può dirci di significativo un romanzo scritto da un uomo che sosteneva il colonialismo in quanto portatore di civiltà (sic) a popolazioni che a suo dire non lo erano? Ha ancora qualcosa da dirci il punto di vista razzista e sessista di Conrad quando sappiamo benissimo che la sua benevolenza è solo la facciata più presentabile di quell’orrore che lo sconvolse così tanto del Congo sotto l’oppressione di Leopoldo II del Belgio?

Ecco, secondo me sì, anche se non riesco a biasimare chi lo bolla come feccia razzista, perché il punto di vista di Conrad, veicolato attraverso il racconto di Marlow, oggi è inaccettabile e il fastidio che provoca può facilmente annegare quello che Cuore di tenebra è ancora capace di dirci, cioè che la …

Review of 'Heart of Darkness' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

It's a precious thing to be able to read a 115-year-old story, and one which is based on personal experience, at that. This novella sheds an unflattering light on imperialism, a culture of greed that led some men to travel to foreign places to mistreat, torture, and murder the natives and sometimes each other. Specifically, it recounts the tale of Charles Marlowe, who had had the experience of sailing down the Congo River, in the employ of an ivory trading company, in search of an agent named Mr. Kurtz, who is known to be very ill. Marlowe hears much about this man, but when he actually meets Kurtz, it is obvious that all he has left is his voice; Kurtz has become devoid of any qualities he might have had in his life. He is already dead. Marlowe returns to England a very disillusioned young man, having witnessed the full …

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