Joseph Conrad’s searing tale of one of the strangest and most memorable journeys ever taken

Quite simply the scariest book ever written, this is a searing tale of one of the strangest and most memorable journeys ever undertaken – to the heart of a geographical and psychological wilderness from which no-one returns unscarred. For this isn’t simply a journey up an uncharted river into a geographical wilderness; rather, it’s a trip deep into our collective subconscious. This story – about what happens when so-called “civilized” human beings go off the rails - was the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola’s movie “Apocalypse Now”.

Conrad himself had undertaken such a river journey as a ship’s captain back in 1889 when he was in his early 30’s and before he took to writing full time. Back then, the Congo Free State, as this area of Africa was known, was a Belgian colony under the personal control of King Leopold II. Atrocities were commonplace, to the point where the international community finally had to sit up and take notice; in a report published in 1904, over 3 million people were said to have died as a direct result of European intervention in the area.

It has long been argued whether “Heart of Darkness”, which first appeared in 1902, was in any way influential in bringing Leopold’s violent regime to the public’s attention; but whether or not, it remains a searing indictment of human rapacity – and depravity.

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