Week #49 – Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Welcome to 2023!  On Mondays this year, let’s discuss and have fun with books. No I’m not writing book reviews. But this website is for writers, and writers like books right? So let’s have FUN with books!

Week #49 – Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, 1899

Sailor Charles Marlow, captain of a river steamboat for a Belgian ivory trade company, journeys up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, an ivory trader. Marlow encounters inefficiency and brutality in the Company’s stations. The native Africans have been forced into the Company’s service and exploited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness

You can read it here

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/219/219-h/219-h.htm

Here's a fun animated summary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0ome5wvYPQ

The movie Apocalypse Now was influenced by this book, with the setting moved to during the Vietnam War

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/

The book would be considered racist if written today

https://theconversation.com/how-conrads-imperial-horror-story-heart-of-darkness-resonates-with-our-globalised-times-94723

https://warontherocks.com/2020/09/the-abiding-relevance-of-heart-of-darkness-for-those-who-wage-war/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/11/06/the-trouble-with-heart-of-darkness

There are two countries in Africa called “Congo”, separated by the Congo River. They are called the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the east side and the Republic of the Congo on the west side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo

What's the difference between them?

https://www.timbuktutravel.com/blog/democratic-republic-of-the-congo

DR Congo is the second-poorest nation in the world, after Haiti

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo

Have you read Heart of Darkness? What did you think of it?