An Outcast of the Islands

Overview

An Outcast of the Islands (1896), Conrad's second novel, is a tale of intrigue in an eastern setting. Love and death are the major players in this parable of human frailty - the story of a man unable to understand others and fated never to possess his own soul. Peter Willems, a clerk in Macassar, granted a 'second chance' at a remote river trading post, falls ever more hopelessly into traps set by himself and others. The pawn of Babalatchi, the one-eyed schemer of power politics, and of the rich Abdulla, who uses Willems to increase his own wealth, his fate is sealed by his lover, Aissa, and by Almayer, an embittered fellow-countryman.The novel is a relentless expose of individual illusion and desire, and a dissection of the futile egotisms and petty corruption at the base of all political and social organizations.

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Author Information

Bio of Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad (originally Jezef 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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Additional Info

Imprint

CONNECT eBooks Classics

Filesize

441.60 KB

Number of Pages

N/A

eBook ISBN

9781434006059