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  • This was first assigned to me as summer reading before my senior year in high school. I got enough out my premier pass at it to be able to ace the test, but unaccompanied reading is NOT the way to experience this amazing work by Conrad. My sophomore year at university, we went through this again in ... Continue

    This was first assigned to me as summer reading before my senior year in high school. I got enough out my premier pass at it to be able to ace the test, but unaccompanied reading is NOT the way to experience this amazing work by Conrad. My sophomore year at university, we went through this again in Brit Lit II - the experience was totally different. And I've loved this novel ever since. From the journey through its influence into modern literature (like T.S. Eliot's superb "Hollow Men"), this book is iconic.

    

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• ― guaddess said on May 12, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

A masterpiece of twentieth-century writing, Heart of Darkness (1902) exposes the tenuous fabric that holds "civilization" together and the brutal horror at the center of European colonialism. Conrad's crowning achievement recounts Marlow's physical and psychological journey deep into the heart of the Belgian Congo in search of the mysterious trader Kurtz.

Joyce Carol Oates on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness:

"Heart of Darkness has had an influence that goes beyond the specifically literary. This parable of a man's 'heart of darkness' dramatized in the alleged 'Dark Continent' of Africa transcended its late Victorian era to acquire the stature of one of the great, if troubling, visionary works of western civilization."

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• middleschoolfictionhighschoolNovels1900-1960british litschoolClassicMy FavoritesAfrica
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