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Lord Jim 
Jósef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski was born in Berdichev, in the Ukraine, in a region that had once been a part of Poland but was then under Russian rule. His father Apollo Korzeniowski was an aristocrat without lands, a poet and translator of English and French literature. The family estates had been sequestrated in 1839 following an anti-Russian rebellion. As a boy the young Joseph read Polish and French versions of English novels with his father. When Apollo Korzeniowski became embroiled in political activities, he was sent to exile with his family to Volgoda, northern Russia, in 1861. By 1869 Conrad's both parents had died of tuberculosis, and he was sent to Switzerland to his maternal uncle. Conrad attended schools in Kraków and persuaded his uncle to let him go to the sea. In the mid-1870s he joined the French merchant marine as an apprentice, and made three voyages to the West Indies between 1875 and 1878. During his youth Conrad also was involved in arms smuggling for the Carlist cause in Spain. After being wounded in a duel, Conrad continued his career at the seas for 16 years in the British merchant navy. He had been deeply in debt, but his uncle discharged his debts. This was a turning point in his life. Conrad rose through the ranks from common seaman to first mate, and by 1886 he obtained his master mariner's certificate, commanding his own ship, Otago. In the same year he was given British citizenship and he changed officially his name to Joseph Conrad. Conrad sailed to many parts of the world, including Australia, various ports of the Indian Ocean, Borneo, the Malay states, South America, and the South Pacific Island. In 1890 he sailed up the Congo River in Africa. The journey provided much material for his novel Heart of Darkness. However, the East Indies particularly attracted Conrad and it became the setting of many of his stories. By 1894 Conrad's sea life was over. During the long journeys he had started to write and Conrad decided to devote himself entirely to literature. At the age of 36 he settled down in England. Although Conrad is known as a novelist, he also tried his hand as a playwright. His first one-act play was not a success but after finishing the text he learned of the existence of the Censor of the Plays, which inspired his satirical essay about the obscure civil servant. In 1896 Conrad married Jessie George, an Englishwoman, with whom he had two sons. He moved to Ashford, Kent and except for trips to France, Italy, Poland, and to the United States in 1923, Conrad lived in his new home country. His first novel, Almayer's Folly, appeared in 1895. The story depicted a derelict Dutchman, who traded on the jungle rivers of Borneo. It was followed by An Outcast of the Islands (1896), less assured in its use of English. The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' was a complex story of a storm off the Cape of Good Hope and of an enigmatic black sailor. Lord Jim was narrated by Charlie Marlow and told about the fall of an young sailor and his redemption. Lord Jim was originally intended as a short story, but was then enlarged into a novel. The beginning of the story is partly based on true events: in 1880 a British captain and his crew abandoned the steamship Jeddah, carrying Muslim pilgrims, when the ship started to leak. Jeddah was brought by another steamship safely to port. Particular blame was attached to A.P. Williams, the first mate, who had organized the desertion of the vessel. Heart of Darkness (1899) was based on a four-month command of a Congo River steamboat, but in the novel the experience become analogous with a quest for inner truths. Conrad gave Marlow his boyhood dream about penetrating into the heart of the continent, but he also knew about Henry Morton Stanley's journey up the Congo river in the mid-1870s. In Youth (1902) the title story recorded Conrad's experiences on the sailing-ship Palestine. Nostromo (1904) was an imaginative novel which again explored man's vulnerability and corruptibility. It includes one of Conrad's most suggestive symbols, the silver mine. In the story the Italian Nostromo ('our man') is destroyed by his appetite for adventure and glory but with his death the secret of the silver is lost forever. The period between The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' and Under Western Eyes (1911) is considered artistically Conrad's most productive. H.G. Wells encouraged Conrad and gave him good reviews and his work was also recognized by John Galsworthy. With Ford Madox Ford he wrote three works - The Inheritors (1901), Romance (1903), and The Nature of Crime (1924). Although Conrad was prolific, his financial situation wasn't secure until 1913 with the publication of Change. The last years of his life were shadowed by rheumatism. He refused an offer of knighthood in 1924 as he had earlier declined honorary degrees from five universities. Conrad died of a heart attack in 1924 and was buried in Canterbury. Conrad's influence upon 20th-century literature was wide. Ernest Hemingway expressed special admiration for the author, and his impact is seen in, among others, the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arthur Koestler, T.S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, André Malraux, Louis-Ferdiand Céline, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Graham Greene. Several of Conrad's stories have been filmed. The most famous adaptations are Alfred Hitchcock's The Sabotage (1936), based on The Secret Agent (1097), Richard Brooks's Lord Jim (1964) and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), based on Heart of Darkness. Conrad sold the American screen rights to his fiction in 1919. 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Otros libros del mes en inglés:  The
100 Greatest Books of the 20th Century65 Quotations
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