Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness is an 1899 novella by the Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad. In it the sailor Charles Marlow describes his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior, and his journey up the river.

Although Conrad does not name the river on which most of the narrative takes place, at the time of writing the Congo Free State was the location of the large and economically important Congo River, and it was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is sent to find Kurtz, an ivory trader working at a station far up the river who has abandoned the company's standards, and the expedition is organised around reaching him.

The book is widely regarded as a critique of European colonialism in Africa and also examines power and morality, and its readers are asked how far the line between civilisation and savagery can be drawn. It was written several years after Conrad's own time in the Belgian Congo, and its reputation rests on Marlow's narration as much as on the plot, since the story is delivered to an audience on a boat before it is anything else.