Guardian Newspaper 1000 Novels discussion

In March we will be reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad for our War & Travel category - who's in?

I have read it recently (at the beginning of February). I will look at what others will think about it.

I have a paper copy of this bound with two other Conrad novels. i've not read it for decades, so I'm in.

So, I didn't exactly enjoy that read :D

Here's my (one star) review. I think I might have edged the rating down a star, simply because the book is usually so lauded.

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Okay, I'm feeling like a complete philistine, but having just finished Conrad's Heart of Darkness (last read when I was a teenager, a long long time ago), I was wildly disappointed with it.

It's WAY too densely written; Kurtz isn't described (or does) enough at any point to warrant the level of anticipation that Marlowe has for him; Conrad may be anti-colonialist (well, he's anti French / Belgian colonialist, not too sure he's anti BRITISH colonialist) but at the same time is deeply deeply racist; and, the worst fault of all, it's boring as sin - I could feel my eyes closing in sleep as soon as I began reading a single word of it. Also was there ever a more annoying person than Marlowe to have attending your jolly boat trip up the Thames if he's going to sit on the bow and bore you with this drivel for four hours before bedtime?

Honestly, you're much better off watching Apocalypse Now. What am I missing here?

I have wanted to re-read this for some time now.

It's pretty short. I think I can do this.

I may need to read this book again now that I understand what it's about. It has to be remembered that Conrad wrote this book as a result of how disturbed he was when witnessing the rampant colonialism of his time. I don't believe he was a racist, but rather a product of his time and this was his effort to show the degradation and exploitation committed by the empires. The ending of this book, when the protagonist returns home, demonstrates how those at home had very little understanding of what was happening in Africa.
While the content of the book is disturbing, the writing is great.

When I read this and complained of not understanding, it was recommended to me that I read King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. It was very good. I learned a lot about what was going on at the time and how Joseph Conrad was involved. Hope it helps :)

Thank you! I've put this on my ever-growing TBR list.

I was a big film buff before I started reading classics, and I think this was one in particular where I benefitted from having Apocalypse Now as one of my fave movies, mostly by the way it prepared me for the "feel" of the story
I'd also read (and loved!) Nostromo as my first Conrad, so I was already sold on his style of storytelling/sentence construction