Adolf Verloc runs a pornography shop in Soho and hangs out with a group of anarchists - he is also a Secret Agent for a foreign power.
Verloc is summoned to the embassy to meet his new boss, Vladimir, who has a plan that involves Verloc planting a bomb at the Greenwich Observatory. He tries to get out of it, but Vladimir threatens to ruin him. Left with no choice Verloc finds a way to plant the bomb, but at the expense of the life of someone close to him...
Chief Inspector Heat investigates the crime and finds a clue about the man who blew himself up - a fragment of cloth with Verloc's address on it...
Themed with the inherent darkness that humans are capable of, this bleak taleswas the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's movie Apocolypse Now.
Conrad's original novel is set in the Congo, where Marlow is captaining an ivory transporter owned by an exploitative company run by cruel managers who treat the local natives with brutality. As the extent of the damage being done is exposed, Marlow finds out about a hero called Kurtz, a man of extreme talents and a rare champion of people.
But what Marlow finds in him is not what he is expecting...
A young boat captain feels the isolation of loneliness of his role at sea as his mistrustful crew make it clear that his lack of experience endangers them.
Brooding one night, he spots a naked man in the sea and pulls him aboard. The man, Leggatt, has escaped another boat after murdering one of its crew. Despite this, the Captain feels drawn to the man who seems to understand him - and so he hides him from the rest of his crew and from the pursuing avengers from the other ship.
But will he be reckless in his determination to support his new friend - and will that lead to more danger?
"I’d rather have written Conrad’s “Nostramo” than any other novel" - F SCott Fitzgerald
From one of the best selling authors of all time, an homage to another. Joseph Conrad's Nostramo is recognised as a masterpiece in English literature as much by his peers as the reading public.
Set in a fictional South American country, it is a story about greed and how it corrupts. Wealthy mine owner Charles Gould wants to protect the silver bullion from the mine after the dictator he helps to put in place is threatened by a coup. He entrusts the bullion to Nostramo. But after the ship that is carrying it is sunk, Nostramo secretly transfers the silver to a remote island and becomes obsessed by the wealth and power it represents. Slowly he becomes a slave to his greed...
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Joseph Conrad
Polish-British author Joseph Conrad was born in 1857 in then Poland (now Ukraine), an only child christened Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. His father Apollo was a writer, political activist and revolutionary and was active in the struggle to regain independence from Russia - a cause Joseph refused to support, choosing exile over resistance. Both his father and his mother Ewa died of tuberculosis within 4 years of each other and Conrad was left in the care of his Uncle, Ewa's brother. At 16 he joined the French merchant navy and soon headed out to The West Indies and Venezuela where he got into trouble after getting involved in gunrunning. Returning to France, he got heavily into debt and attempted suicide - and to avoid conscription after that, he joined a British freighter bound for Constantinople. the return journey saw him land in Lowestoft UK and he joined the British Merchant Navy with which he served the next 16 years. Conrad started his first fiction after taking rooms by the river Thames whilst awaiting a new command. A strange occurrence interrupted his writing - as a child he had placed his finger randomly on a map and committed that he would go where - and by coincidence he got the opportunity, deciding to take up the chance to captain a river boat on the Congo. He suffered psychological, spiritual, even metaphysical shock in the Congo, and his physical health was also damaged; for the rest of his life, he was racked by recurrent fever and gout. It was to become the inspiration for one of his best known novels, the Heart of Darkness.
Much of Conrad's work was based on his adventures and experiences at sea. His themes focus on the psychological and behavioural impact of isolation and the tragedy that often results. In 1895 Conrad married Jessie George and moved to the South East of England. they had two sons. His work was plagued by ill health and financial challenges until 1910, after he had written his most successful works, Lord Jim, Nostromo and The Secret Agent, which involved a significant change of themes to mystery, intrigue and romance. Despite his Polish beginnings, Conrad is regarded as one of the finest masters of English prose and was offered a knighthood in 1924, shortly before his death.
