Tales of Unrest
1898
These five stories mark Joseph Conrad's emergence as one of the great moral chroniclers of the British imperial age. Written by a man who learned English as an adult, who sailed these waters as a young officer, and who understood empire from the inside as few writers ever have, Tales of Unrest crackles with the tension between what civilization claims to be and what it actually does. The collection opens with 'Karain: A Memory,' a haunting tale of a Malay war chief bound by honor to a ghostly comrade, and ranges through stories of colonial outposts where madness blooms, of white settlers gone feral in the tropical heat, of men whose 'civilized' selves shatter against alien shores. Conrad's prose is lavish and precise in equal measure, each sentence weighted with the knowledge that empire is built on violence and maintained through self-deception. This is Conrad before Heart of Darkness, but the same darkness already lives here, already gnaws. For readers who want fiction that refuses easy comfort, that insists on the complicate responsibilities of looking.
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“Ah! These commercial interests -- spoiling the finest life under the sun. Why must the sea be used for trade -- and for war as well?...It would have been so much nicer just to sail about, with here and there a port and a bit of land to stretch one's legs on, buy a few books and get a change of cooking for a while.””
— Joseph Conrad
“Slavery is an awful thing," stammered out Kayerts in an unsteady voice. "Frightful”
— Joseph Conrad
“We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know nothing real beyond the words. Nobody knows what suffering or sacrifice mean”
— Joseph Conrad
“There's no worse enemy and no better friend than a brother, Tuan, for one brother knows another, and in perfect knowledge is strength for good or evil.””
— Joseph Conrad
“The promises, the terrors, the hopes of eternity, are the concern of the corrupt dead; but the obvious sweetness of life belongs to living, healthy men.””
— Joseph Conrad
“faithful death that never forgets in the press of work the most insignificant of its children.””
— Joseph Conrad
“There can be no life without faith and love”
— Joseph Conrad
“the gift of heaven is in the hands of every man. But””
— Joseph Conrad
“The serenity of truth and the peace of death can be only secured through a largeness of contempt embracing all the profitable servitudes of life. He””
— Joseph Conrad
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Conrad, Joseph. Tales of Unrest. Lex, lex-books.com/book/tales-of-unrest-3552b88c-0c5c-47bb-a92e-a6a2f3392a53.Conrad, J. (1898). Tales of Unrest. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/tales-of-unrest-3552b88c-0c5c-47bb-a92e-a6a2f3392a53Conrad, Joseph. Tales of Unrest. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/tales-of-unrest-3552b88c-0c5c-47bb-a92e-a6a2f3392a53.
