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Biography: Joseph Conrad
Enlightening overview of a literary pioneer
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IN A Penguin readers’ list of the 100 must-read classic novels, Joseph Conrad appears only once, at number 92.

[[{"fid":"27931","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]Unsurprisingly, the named work is his short novella Heart of Darkness, often found on college syllabuses and the subject of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 blockbuster film, Apocalypse Now, which relocated the action from the menacing hinterland of the turn-of-the-century Congo to the US genocide in Vietnam.

Designed for the student and the general reader, Robert Hampson’s short biography of Conrad opens with a survey of the shifting literary reputation of the novelist, who has been widely acknowledged as a master stylist and innovator in the emerging 20th-century modern novel.

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