Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad

Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad

Almayer's Folly was Conrad's first novel, set in a remote Bornean outpost at the end of the last century. Conrad draws on his own experience to present the strains of life at a cultural crossroads. The Dutch trader, Almayer, is stranded in Sambir, thirty miles up a virtually unknown equatorial river. He lives among old and new cultures; his wife is Sulu (Filipino), behind him live his Arab rivals, across the river is the Malay rajah's campong, inland are the primitive Dyak head-hunters, and decisions taken in London and Amsterdam affect every household in the settlement. In its social density and variety the novel prefigures Conrad's later masterpieces Nostromo and The Secret Agent . This is the first critical edition of Almayer's Folly , with an Introduction which demonstrates the novel's importance as an exploration of colonialism, and shows that in this early work Conrad had already elaborated the fictional technique and conception of human life than served to make him a key figure in the evolution and achievement of literary modernism. This book is intended for general readers, students of English and European Literature at 6th form, undergraduate, and postgraduate lvel.

Joseph Conrad, christened Josef Teodor Konrad, Nalecz Korzeniowski, was born on December 3, 1857, in a part of Russia that had once belonged to Poland. His parents were members of the landed gentry, but as ardent Polish patriots, the suffered considerably for their political views. Orphaned at eleven, Conrad attended school for a few years in Cracow, He soon concluded, however, that there was no future for a Pole in occupied Poland, and at sixteen he left his ancestral home forever.

The sea was Conrad's love and career for the next twenty years. In the French merchant marine, he sailed to the West. Indies, smuggled guns to Spanish rebels, ran into debt, and bungled a suicide attempt Then in the British merchant navy, he rose to first mate and finally to captain, sailing to Australia and Borneo and surviving at least one shipwreck. In 1890 he contracted to become captain of a Congo River steamer, but the six months he spent in Africa led only to disillusionment and ill health; this episode would become the basis for Conrad's masterpiece, Heart of Darkness. Reluctantly leaving the merchant service, he settled in England and completed his first novel, Almayer's Folly, already begun at sea.

Hi subsequent works, many of which drew upon his sea experiences, include The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897), Lord Jim (1900), Heart of Darkness (1902), Youth (1902) Typhoon (1903), Nastromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), The Secret Sharer (1910), Under the Western Eyes (1911), and Chance (1913). The man who was twenty-one years old before he spoke a word of English is now regarded as one of the superb English stylists of all time. Conrad died almost literally on his desk in 1924, at the age of sixty-six.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780192816979
ISBN 10	0192816977
Title	Almayer's Folly
Author	Joseph Conrad
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year published	1992-06-01
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.