About the book

On a yacht anchored in the Thames at dusk, the sailor Marlow tells his companions how he once took charge of a river steamer in the Congo, sent by a Belgian trading company to bring back its star agent, Mr. Kurtz, from the station far upriver. What he saw on the way, and what he found at the end, changed him. Joseph Conrad based the story on his own journey up the Congo in 1890, and it was published in 1899.