Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad about a narrated voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State in the so-called "heart of Africa". Charles Marlow, the narrator, tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. This setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his obsession with the ivory trader Kurtz, which enables Conrad to create a parallel between what Conrad calls "the greatest town on earth", London, and Africa as places of darkness.
Heart of Darkness
When Conrad began to write the novella, eight years after returning from Africa, he drew inspiration from his travel journals. He described "Heart of Darkness" as "a wild story" of a journalist who becomes manager of a station in the (African) interior and makes himself worshipped by a tribe of savages. Thus described, the subject seems comic but is not. The tale was first published as a three-part serial, in February, March and April 1899, in "Blackwood's Magazine" (February 1899 was the magazine's 1000th issue: special edition). Later in 1902, "Heart of Darkness" was included in the book "" (published on 13 November 1902, by William Blackwood).