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| Heart of Darkness | 
 enlarge | Author: Joseph Conrad
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: £2.00
Buy Used: £0.01
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Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 1629
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 112
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 4.4 x 0.4
ISBN: 0140620486
EAN: 9780140620481
ASIN: 0140620486
Publication Date: January 25, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 One of the greats February 13, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Some readers seem to have difficulty with this short novel. It's certainly not easy reading (Conrad never is, though I love his prose style), but is a challenging, thought-provoking and highly absorbing character study. The journey is as much into a mind breaking down as it is a physical journey down the Congo River. I found it richly rewarding (both the 1st time and when I read it again recently). It probably says more, in a short space, than any other novel about human existence, civilization and human excesses (with the possible exception of "The Fall" by Albert Camus). Powerful stuff - if you like a strong poison then try it (and then check out Conrad's great full-length novels: "Lord Jim", "Nostromo" and "Under Western Eyes").
 Overhyped December 28, 2007
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
After reading a couple of essays praising Conrad's writtings, I bought this book and tried to read it. How dissappointing the experience is! How is it that Conrad is regarded as a master of the English language? His style is emphatically european with lots of attention paid to lower order hyponyms and adjectives, similar to that of other contemporary Germanic and Russian authors. Lots of sentences are so foreign to native English speakers that I am not surprised to learn that he did not learn English until he was 21. That said, it is still admirable that he churned out so many readable books.
However, Heart of Darkness is not really an enjoyable read. Sentences are so lumpy and bumpy and I must say that Conrad wrote the most anti-climatic piece of literature in history. The journey was interestingly described, building up to the meeting with Kurtz. After that, nothing. Where is the corruption of a man's soul in the wild? Why did he die so rapidly? According to current moral viewpoints, the guy did not do anything more outrageous than accumulating lots of ivory and trying to be too friendly to the natives. The book did not offer any insight into the man's supposedly dark soul, worse it did not even show clearly that he was corrupt in the first place.
Over-hyped, decidedly mediocre December 10, 2007
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
I wasn't quite sure what the fuss was about. I didn't find the book to be particularly readable and though there were moments which were well written and interesting, on the whole I thought it was a rather standard book. Worth, reading, if only to understand the numerous references that people draw from it. But very mediocre in my opinion.
Not my cup of tea December 6, 2007
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
This novel is often regarded as a classic. I studied it for my third year English course. Although it addresses plenty of interesting themes, as a novel for reading, it's pretty tough. There are no chapters t help separate your reading, and the pace is generally quite slow except for a few scenes in the middle of the novel. The language is slightly tougher too.
I didn't enjoy reading it, but I did enjoy studying the themes and how they relate.
A fearsome journey October 10, 2007
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
"Heart of Darkness" is by no means an easy novel, nor a pretty one but in its hundred or so pages it contains more insights, deeply disturbing ones at that, than your average novel in a thousand pages. The voyage upstream of the narrator to find the enigmatic Mr. Kurtz becomes a voyage into the darkest corners of the human heart. Not a pleasant journey, but one with important lessons for each and everyone of us. Once you've read it, you'll never forget it.
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