Showing results by author "Joseph Conrad" in All Categories

Exclusively from Audible. The Secret Agent is based on an actual attempt made in 1894 to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. A labyrinth of greed, corruption, and betrayal, it is the most darkly humorous of all Conrad's tales. It follows a European secret agent, Adolf Verloc, 'a London shop owner' with anarchist leanings who becomes reluctantly involved in a plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. Full of great characters, melodramatic irony and psychological intrigue the tale is far from simple....

Acclaimed as one of the great, albeit disturbing, visionary works of Western civilization, Conrad's haunting tale dramatizes the stark realities of Africa in the colonial period. Heart of Darkness reflects the physical and psychological tragedies Conrad experienced while working in the Belgian Congo in 1890 and is the basis of Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now.

Under Western Eyes, Conrad's novel of political treachery and oppression, begins with a bomb that kills a hated Russian minister of police along with innocent bystanders. A young student named Razumov hides the perpetrator, then betrays him and becomes a spy among his exiled comrades. He faces a moral dilemma from which there is no escape. This masterwork, published six years before the Russian Revolution, is a chillingly accurate prophecy of what was to come.

Set in the fictional South American country of Costaguana, Nostromo explores the volatile politics and crippling greed surrounding the San Tomé silver mine. The story of power, love, revolutions, loyalty and reward is told with richly evocative description and brilliantly realised characters. But Nostromo is more than an adventure story; it is also a profoundly dark moral fable. Its language is as compellingly resonant as the sea itself; the characters absorbing and complex.

This wide-ranging collection comprises the following six short stories by Joseph Conrad: Youth: A Narrative (1902); Karain: A Memory (1898); An Outpost of Progress (1898); The Lagoon (1898); Amy Foster (1909); The Anarchist - A Desperate Tale (1903). 'Youth: A Narrative' is an epic tale of a perilous voyage under sail to Bangkok, with a cargo of coal, narrated by Charles Marlow.

Jim, the first mate aboard a small steamer named the Patna, travels from port to port in the Pacific Ocean. When the ship hits floating wreckage, Jim and the crew are forced to abandon it, leaving hundreds of ethnic travelers onboard. However, Jim's reprehensible actions are soon discovered by the court, and he is compelled to face his guilt and redeem himself - a journey that leads him to a remote exotic location where he is revered as the Lord, "Tuan Jim".

The story of the enigmatic Kurtz and his outpost in deepest Congo is superbly narrated by the gifted Ralph Cosham. Also included is "The Lagoon", a story of courage and love in the South Pacific.

Penguin Classics presents Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, adapted for listening and available as a digital audiobook as part of the Penguin English Library series. Read by David Threlfall, the star of the hit Channel 4 series, Shameless. The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, rage - who can tell? But truth - truth stripped of its cloak of time.

From his many years on the high seas as a mariner, mate, and captain, Joseph Conrad created unique works, including Heart of Darkness, that have left an indelible mark on world literature. First published in 1899, his haunting novel Lord Jim is both a riveting sea adventure and a fascinating portrait of a unique outcast from civilization.

A young sea captain discovers a stowaway - and allows him to stay, eventually seeing in him a reflection of himself. Or perhaps that's all there ever was. Wendy Mullen's contralto voice captures the music of the sea; you'll be mesmerized by the telling and the tale. Conrad is at his best, and Mullen's reading captivates.

From one of the greatest modern writers in world literature comes a magnificent story of love, adventure, and rescue played out against the shimmering South Seas. Alone on a tropical island, a Swedish baron and a beautiful violinist discover the long-lost joys of love. But when two treasure hunters arrive on the beach, the lovers know that evil has invaded their romantic paradise—an evil they are powerless to stop.

Here are legendary director, producer, screenwriter, author, and actor Orson Welles' historic interpretations of excerpts from classic literature. Includes selections from Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince', H.G. Wells' "The Red Room", Saki's "Shredni Vashtar", Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer", Rudyard Kipling's "Riki-Tikii-Tavi", Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Wakefield", Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart", and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde".

One of the great adventure novels of our language creates a most engaging central character, Nostromo. A picturesque man of action and popular hero, Nostromo lives to be "well-spoken of" by the citizens of Costaguana, the mythical South American banana republic where the story takes place. Around this figure, Conrad spins a story of revolution, politics, and racial conflict as complex as Nostromo, the man whose greatest enemy is himself.

The place is the Belgian Congo, "darkest Africa" of the late 19th century. The narrator, Marlow, describes his experiences running a river steamer for the Company and the cruel colonial exploitation that was practiced. Marlow goes into the jungle in search of the mysterious and powerful white trader Kurtz, hoping to find answers and explanations in that shadowy figure's character for the evil surrounding him.

A wonderful anthology of fifteen of the great classic Novellas. 1. Immensee by Theodor Storm 2. The Jew's Beech Tree by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff 3. The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad 4. The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy 5. Mad Monkton by Wilkie Collins 6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 7. The Lifted Veil by George Eliot 8. England my England by D. H. Lawrence

The story tells of Jim, a young, good-looking, genial, and naive water-clerk on the Patna, a cargo ship plying Asian waters. One night, when the ship collides with an obstacle and begins to sink, acting on impulse, Jim jumps overboard and lands in a lifeboat, which happens to be bearing the unscrupulous captain and his cohorts away from the disaster.

The annals of movie history are full of lost treasures – spectacular scripts from world-renowned writers that could have been classics, had they only been made. Now, for the first time, some of these forgotten gems have been brought to life, fully realised as vivid, cinematic radio productions. Scripted by major 20th Century writers, they star a host of A-list actors and feature richly evocative, atmospheric soundtracks.

Flora de Barral, the daughter of a bankrupt businessman and swindler, must find her own way in the world when her father is convicted of financial speculation. Unfortunately, this is no easy thing for a single and vulnerable young woman in turn-of-the-century London.

As the Revolution rages in France, a seafarer named Peyrol, a master-gunner in the French republican navy, pirate, and for nearly 50 years, rover of the outer seas, comes to the end of a lifetime lived on the seas and seeks refuge in a remote farmhouse on the French Riviera. As he attempts to settle into a peaceful existence, Peyrol struggles to redefine himself and returns to the sea for one final voyage.

Dark allegory describes Marlow's journey up the Congo River and his meeting with and fascination by Mr. Kurtz, a mysterious personage who dominates the unruly inhabitants of the region. A masterly blend of adventure, character development and psychological penetration. Considered by many to be Conrad's finest, most enigmatic story.