The Arrow Of Gold By Joseph Conrad : From the author of Books like - Heart of Darkness - Lord Jim - Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction - The Secret Agent - Nostromo - Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer

Book excerpt: From the author of Books like - Heart of Darkness - Lord Jim - Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction - The Secret Agent - Nostromo - Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer - Heart of Darkness and Other Tales - The Shadow-Line - The Secret Sharer - Victory - Tales Of Hearsay - Under Western Eyes - The Arrow Of Gold - The Inheritors - Tales Of Unrest About the Book: Reflecting Conrad's genius for narrative that focuses on the quest for inner truths, The Arrow of Gold is an exploration of the dangerous appetites of men and of human vulnerability, as well as a profound meditation on the emotional boundary between people. Boasting a cast of extraordinary and eccentric personalities, including the heroine Doa Rita, this is a story of adventure on the high seas, of the revelation of love, of the crushing weight of loss, and of freedom found in the recklessness of unadorned sincerity. During the Carlist war of the early 1870s, a young sailor, the unnamed protagonist, joins the champions of Don Carlos de Bourbon, pretender to the throne of Spain. The Carlists use the eager youth's intense attraction to the sea to persuade him to run perilous enterprises for their cause, ventures he later learns have been financed by the beautiful mistress and heiress of a rich man's fortune. When he falls in love with her, he finds himself moved absolutely by this discovery, despite the fact that she is unable to return his love fully. In the end he is left alone with his first love, the sea, his brief time with the mysterious Doa Rita marking a tumultuous awakening to a life of passion, the desolation that hides in its shadow, and the possibility of rebirth in its wake. Although not as well known as his earlier novels Lord Jim and Nostromo, The Arrow of Gold was critically acclaimed when it first appeared in 1919 and is still considered to be among the best of Conrad's later works. About the Author: Joseph Conrad, original name Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, (born December 3, 1857, Berdichev, Ukraine, Russian Empire [now Berdychiv, Ukraine]—died August 3, 1924, Canterbury, Kent, England), English novelist and short-story writer of Polish descent, whose works include the novels Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), and The Secret Agent (1907) and the short story “Heart of Darkness” (1902). During his lifetime Conrad was admired for the richness of his prose and his renderings of dangerous life at sea and in exotic places. But his initial reputation as a masterful teller of colourful adventures of the sea masked his fascination with the individual ...(100 of 2481 words). Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he came to be regarded a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature.