An Outcast of the Islands

This book is Joseph Conrad's second novel, published in 1886.

Conrad is quite an author; he was Polish, and didn't even learn English until his twenties, and yet became one of the finest novelists ever to write in English. The Wikipedia article I linked to above says he is a forerunner to modern writers, his style influencing everyone from D.H. Lawrence to Herman Melville. Personally I feel William Faulkner (another of my favorites) owes something to Conrad as well. Listening to Conrad's novel Nostromo on CD was a peak experience of my reading life.

"An Outcast of the Islands" depiction of obsession and alienation is so intense that I actually had to stop reading it for a few months. Even with the few month's gap, the story made such an impression on me that when I picked it back up last week, the whole story was still in my mind... In fact I never really stopped thinking about it. Not too many books have made such an impression on me.

The cover shown here is the cover of my copy. I can't find a better image online. I find the cover itself very evocative; it's from a painting called "Old Boathouse and Riverside Vegetation, Sarawak", by Marianne North.

But I'm not eloquent enough to explain Conrad's appeal. His sentences are simple and declarative, like Tolstoy's. The stories tend to shift back and forth in time and perspective, like Faulkner. But mainly, his stories are very interior; Conrad externalizes in narrative action the deepest functioning of the human soul.

There's a few authors that I've made a point of collecting and reading all their works that I could find... and they are an eclectic group. Donald Hamilton (espionage), William Faulkner (best writer ever), Glen Cook (fantasy), Robert E. Howard (fantasy), Ross MacDonald (mysteries), and Erich Maria Remarque (war). Conrad is well on his way to joining this group!