Heart of Darkness

Born in Poland, Conrad entered the British merchant service, becoming a master mariner and a naturalized British subject in 1886. In order to fill empty, boring hours at sea as a sailor, Conrad began writing his first novel. When he later transferred onto a Congo River, he started taking notes that would eventually become the basis for one of his masterpieces, Heart of Darkness. The novel was first serialized in Blackwood's Magazine and appeared soon after as a single volume. It is one of Conrad's best-known stories and is centered around the death of the powerful white trader aboard a river steamer in the Belgian Congo. It is one of the greatest portraits in all fiction of moral deterioration and reversion to savagery and reveals the terrifying depths of human corruptibility.