Customer Reviews

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

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The series "Cambridge Companions" is somewhat uneven. Some titles are excellent, and others are inaccesible, tedious and really not "Companions" at all. This "Companion", however, to Joseph Conrad is probably one of the best in the series.

Beginning with a short biography of Conrad's life, there follow chapters on the short fiction, and several on most of the important of Conrad's works, such as "Heart of Darkness", "Lord Jim", "Nostromo" and "The Secret Agent". These are followed by sections on his late novels, Conradian narrative, his influence, and others. All of the Chapters are written in closed essay form by leading Conrad scholars, are easy to read, and well documented with footnotes. The final chapter includes a fairly comprehensive bibliography that wil be most helpful for students and scholars alike. It will provide a good starting point for further research.

If you are interested in Joseph Conrad, beyond reading his novels and short stories, then this book will be very helpful. I recommend it highly.

Joseph Conrad is not only a Great Master of English literature, but also a man who wandered all over the world, by sea and land, producing for our delight a treasure of short stories as intense as novels, as well as a dozen novels as engaging as fairy tales. For some readers he is above all a writer of "sea stories", for others a creator of fabulous adventures; for many, an intuitive connoisseur of the human soul who gave birth to unforgettable characters. But there is more: Joseph Conrad inhabits his books, he is a friend who shows us a path, gently spelling out about a period in human history. He talks to the intelligence and the emotions. The bunch of essays of this wonderful companion, by the Cambridge fellows, gives us precious hints for travelling with Captain Conrad through the labyrinths and waves of the physical and virtual planet in which chance has placed us to live and die.