Heart of Darkness (Illustrated)

Heart of Darkness is a short novel written as a framed narrative, about Charles Marlow’s life as an ivory transporter down the Congo River in Central Africa. The river is “a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land.” In the course of his travel in central Africa, Marlow becomes obsessed with Mr. Kurtz.

The haunting story is a complex exploration of the attitudes people hold on what constitutes a barbarian versus a civilized society and the attitudes on colonialism and racism that were part and parcel of European imperialism. Originally published as a three-part serial, in Blackwood's Magazine, the 1899 novella by Joseph Conrad has been translated into many languages and was the basis for Francis Ford Coppola's acclaimed 1979 movie Apocalypse Now.

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness as the sixty-seventh of the hundred best novels in English of the twentieth century.

*Includes image gallery.