Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Charles Marlow. Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames, London, England Heart of Darkness, novella by Joseph Conrad, first published in 1902 with the story “Youth” and thereafter published separately. The story, written at the height of the British Empire, reflects the physical and psychological shock Conrad himself experienced in 1890 when he worked briefly in the Belgian Congo. The experience left him disillusioned, questioning what it meant to be civilized in the age of colonialism. The book was an inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now (1979)