A Set of Six

Joseph Conrad

nov 2022 · Erika · Narrado por Peter Dann

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Each of the stories in this collection is spun from a simple, if typically wry and bleak, idea. In "Gaspar Ruiz", a South American general who has fought in a war of independence tells his guests a long tale about a notorious strong man that explains the origin of his current domestic arrangements. "The Informer" leads the reader into the depths of a political conspiracy, dealing very slyly indeed with questions of truth and pretence. In "The Brute", we are asked whether we can believe there could be such a thing as a positively malevolent ship, while "An Anarchist" introduces us to an unfortunate man who has had a vision of society itself as malevolent and has not been able to rest in peace ever since. "The Duel", the most obviously likeable tale in this collection, recounts the history of an unfortunate feud between two officers of Napoleon's army that caused them to fight a series of duels over many years. "Il Conde" rounds out the collection, giving a new twist to the saying "See Naples and die".

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Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski ) was a Polish-born English novelist who today is most famous for Heart of Darkness, his fictionalized account of Colonial Africa. Conrad left his native Poland in his middle teens to avoid conscription into the Russian Army. He joined the French Merchant Marine and briefly employed himself as a wartime gunrunner. He then began to work aboard British ships, learning English from his shipmates. He was made a Master Mariner, and served more than sixteen years before an event inspired him to try his hand at writing. He was hired to take a steamship into Africa, and according to Conrad, the experience of seeing firsthand the horrors of colonial rule left him a changed man. Joseph Conrad settled in England in 1894, the year before he published his first novel. He was deeply interested in a small number of writers both in French and English whose work he studied carefully. This was useful when, because a need to come to terms with his experience, lead him to write Heart of Darkness, in 1899, which was followed by other fictionalized explorations of his life. He has been lauded as one of the most powerful, insightful, and disturbing novelists in the English canon despite coming to English later in life, which allowed him to combine it with the sensibilities of French, Russian, and Polish literature.