Tales of Unrest

By Joseph Conrad

Book Overview

A John Bull English gunrunner recalls his haunted Malayan friend, Karain, and his exotic superstitions and memories. Yet where does the reality lie? Two colonial officers extol the benefits they are bringing to an African village in the form of 'quays and warehouses, and barracks -- and billiard-rooms'. A French republican who has fathered two idiot-sons makes his peace with the Church -- only to have an idiot-daughter. A woman chooses not to leave her husband ... but he leaves her. Such are the ironies of Conrad's earliest short stories, no apprentice work but miniature masterpieces in their own right. As astoundingly original in construction as the great novels that were to come, these tales are in many ways more challenging and more disturbing still. A sense of human existence as surprising and often perplexing informs every page of this remarkable collection. Complex, arresting and unsettling, these are indeed 'tales of unrest'.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140180362
• ISBN13: 9780140180367
• Release Date: May 1991
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Mental Unrest

In these tales, people are put under heavy mental stress by fatal accidents, hostile environments or insoluble doubts. Their reactions become uncontrollable. The short stories give a good picture of Conrad's themes, story building with surprising outcomes and view on mankind: `Morality is not a method of happiness'. In `Karain: a Memory', a Malay war-chief makes an odyssey trying to kill a woman who left her native village with a white man. He becomes haunted by the spirit of his dead brother. In `The Lagoon', the adduction of a woman turns into a fatal accident. `There is no light and no peace in the world; but there is death - death for many. I left him in the midst of the enemies; but I am going back.' In `An outpost of Progress', two lonely `progressive' colonialists become haunted by their hostile environment; `a suggestion of things vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion tries the civilized nerves.' In `The Return', a marriage turns sour on the impossible `certitude of love and faith'. In `The Idiots', a less successful offspring puts a marriage under extreme pressure. These sometimes furiously written stories with their high evocative power of landscapes, feelings and conflicts should not be missed.