Heart of Darkness

"Joseph Conrad, or Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, was a Polish-born writer—actually, in what is now Ukraine—who became a master of the English language. I consider him to be one of the greatest novelists in English literature, historical fiction or not. Not only is the novel a powerful critique of European colonialism in the Congo Free State during the late 19th century, it’s extraordinarily innovative as literature. Its Modernist style, unreliable narrator, and complex psychological themes were carving an original furrow in the literary landscape of his time. And as you say, there are the imperialist aspects – but what makes its presence endure are the crucial themes of racism , exploitation, and Western guilt, making it a bravura piece on the pernicious nature of colonialism."

"We’re back in the Congo and this is a layered story told by Charles Marlow, the narrator. Remember what Ondaatje was talking about in terms of truth, where truth begins and ends—how it disappears in history and gossip? I think that’s a really strong part of the layering that Conrad does here. Also, remember what we said about language; note that English was not Conrad’s first language, but he wrote better in English than almost any of us can. Marlow is looking for Mr Kurtz, a fellow European and work colleague who has holed himself up in the interior. Marlow has been sent on a mission to find him and bring him back. As you said, this is incredibly controversial because some read it as the ‘native’ versus the ‘white man’. And what is “The horror! The horror!”—these critical words at the end of the book, when Marlow finds Kurtz on his deathbed? One interpretation is that this can be referring to the horror upriver in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Somewhere upriver, Kisangani maybe, somewhere up there, the way that people live and the way that people relate to each other is horrifying and uncivilised and of this native construct. “English was not Conrad’s first language but he wrote better in English than almost any of us can” That’s one interpretation. The other interpretation—the one that I ascribe to—is that he is referring to the atrocities that Conrad himself witnessed in the Congo, how much the people suffered there under the colonial administration of the Belgians. But it’s ambiguous. I’m not here to fight with people who think it’s racist. However, if you want to try and create a conversation in a book, then Conrad’s succeeded. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Take Conrad’s own history, his personal history living on the margins as a minority—he might not be black-skinned, but as a peripatetic East European he lived on the fringes of society. I sense that the way he’s written this is very much in sympathy of an artificial colonial administrative structure that is foisted on another culture and then what horrors unfold as a consequence. Conrad is the ultimate figure of displacement given his life at sea. He understands the world of his books more than any other of the writers we’ve looked at, I think. Although Rushdie might disagree. There was a different use of language in that era, too, language that is now abhorrent. I think we have to remember the context. There are definitely some remarks and lines in the book which make us wince in 2018. But we still read and adore Othello in spite of its faults. I really like that observation. I remember doing a story in the United Arab Emirates, reporting on economic migrants. One of the women that I interviewed—anonymously in a nail bar—was Filipina. She told me about her children in Europe: she didn’t know exactly where they were, hadn’t seen them in years, but they were still WhatsApping every day. So, you’re right, in past times when it took a month to get a letter, and another month to send a reply, that’s a very different world with different kinds of intimacies. But even though we might have this sense of being in touch—which is such a funny use of language, because there’s no touch at all—I think there’s still this make-believe attached to being on the other side of the world and remembering home. You still have this conjuring, this idealising, of where you’ve come from. Whereas, in fact, oftentimes you’ve left it for a reason. In the case that we’re talking about, you’re leaving it because you’re trying to get away, to find something better. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Some say you you might have felt more dislocated in the past because you couldn’t get a taste of home by looking at a phone, by looking at a picture, or a live video. But I’m not sure. Our memories are still curated even with the intervention of tech. My family does that about the Czech Republic; they look back to Communist times and remember only the good things. And we look back to the ‘old days’ when children could walk to school on their own. It’s completely beyond reason, but we do often cling to sentimentality, subscribe to a selective amnesia, curate our memories, and that’s what makes for all these contradictions, these mistruths and untruths, and how much more interesting life is because of all that."

"It’s a marvellous novella. I’ve worked in the Congo and I’m now an ambassador for UNICEF and went on a trip there four or five years ago which was pure Conrad. The main highway in the Congo is the river. This is a book about the river, about the ivory trade, about the rapacity of the white man, it’s about the things that happen to the white man. Its enduring strength is that it’s very ambivalent about the whole imperial enterprise. A bit of Conrad sees it as a noble shedding of light into the darkness but in a memorable passage he says “what are you doing taking land away from people with different shaped noses and different coloured skins than ours”. So it’s both pro and anti-imperial. It’s an exploration of the darkness in our own hearts. The principal character is a river boat captain. The story starts at the lower reaches of the Thames and a yarn amongst old sailors about this guy Charles Marlow who is out of work but through relatives in Brussels gets a job as a river boat captain on the River Congo. The previous captain was killed by natives in a row over a chicken and the boat was incapacitated. Marlow finds the boat and there is a marvellous account of putting it together again and descriptions of the people he meets from the trading company and their ambition and their rapacity. He gets the boat going. And there is talk of the agent who produces more ivory than all the others, whose name is Kurtz. And it becomes a mission to find Kurtz and when he finds him, he finds that Kurtz has gone completely mad. The film Apocalypse Now was modelled on this. Lots of unspeakable things happen and Kurtz dies. Marlow then comes back and reports to Kurtz’s betrothed. It’s a story inside a story. It’s a story about the darkness at the heart of us all. I’ve read it over and over again. It’s quite short, only about 35,000 words, but it is incredibly eloquent. And to think that he wrote it in his third language is quite extraordinary. Yes. Polish was his first language. French was his second. English was this third. I found this book helped give me an understanding of the Congo even today. It’s ungovernable and ungoverned today, as it was then. There are still no proper east-west roads in the Congo. Mobutu [Sese Seko], who ruled it for 32 years, looted it just like [Belgium’s] King Leopold looted it. He wouldn’t have any roads built from east to west in case the eastern tribes marched and overthrew him which is essentially what happened in the end. So it’s very up to date."