Lord Jim

"Men act badly sometimes without being much worse than others."

Charlie Marlow from Conrad’s previous adventure novel, ‘Heart of Darkness’, is back, and he is trying to piece together and understand the life of Jim, a British seaman with a shameful past. Once a mate aboard a merchant ship carrying hundreds of Muslim pilgrims, Jim and the crew made the mistake of abandoning all the passengers, believing the ship would sink. But it did not, and the passengers lived to tell the tale.

Praised by Virginia Wolf, Conrad’s writing is ambitious, intriguing and humane. ‘Lord Jim’ (1900) is a classic tale of redemption. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was a Polish-born author who left Poland in his teens to avoid enlistment in the Russian Army. He learned English aboard British ships and started writing in that language after settling in England. His most famous novel is ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1899), which was inspired by his experiences on the open sea.