Nostromo

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard is a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1904 after being serialised in monthly instalments. It is set in Costaguana, an invented South American republic whose history and geography are drawn from the real countries of the region, and mostly in the port city of Sulaco.

Costaguana has lived through generations of tyranny, revolution and warfare, and the stability it has lately enjoyed under the dictator Ribiera rests on the mine worked by Charles Gould, a native of the country of English descent who owns the concession near Sulaco. The silver that comes out of that mountain is the thing everyone in the novel wants: it pays for order, and it is the prize for whoever can take it.

Conrad explains in a note to later editions that he first heard the germ of the story as a young sailor in the Gulf of Mexico, from a man who told him about someone who had made off with a whole lighter full of silver. The novel takes that anecdote and builds the fate of a country and the reputation of a man around it.