In his journey to the furthest navigable point of the Congo River, as the captain of a steamboat for a colonial trading company, Charlie Marlow observes the insatiable and inhuman absurdity hidden behind the guise of civilizing the savages.
Meanwhile, this journey is also a similarly nightmarish excursion into the dark depths of the human soul, into the unresolved riddle of human existence. Furthermore, in the character of Kurtz, Conrad uniquely presages, as a natural consequence of Western civilization, the type of charismatic leaders who would later unleash bloodshed across Europe.
Heart of Darkness, written in 1900, significantly contributed to the international protest movement against the abuses of the Belgians in the Congo and later became a central reference point in T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" and in recent years has been used as a starting point for Coppola's film "Apocalypse Now."
[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]
