Joseph Conradās 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 ā to the heart of a geographical and psychological wilderness from which no-one returns unscarred. For this isnāt simply a journey up an uncharted river into a geographical wilderness; rather, itās a trip deep into our collective subconscious.
This story ā about what happens when so-called ācivilizedā human beings go off the rails - was the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppolaās movie āApocalypse Nowā.
Conrad himself had undertaken such a river journey as a shipās captain back in 1889 when he was in his early 30ās 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 āHeart of Darknessā, which first appeared in 1902, was in any way influential in bringing Leopoldās violent regime to the publicās attention; but whether or not, it remains a searing indictment of human rapacity ā and depravity.