Nostromo

Set in the fictional South American republic of Costaguana, Nostromo is a sweeping tale of political upheaval, personal ambition, and moral ambiguity. At its center stands the incorruptible Italian foreman Nostromo, whose reputation for honor becomes both his greatest asset and his ultimate burden in a world where empires rise on fragile dreams, and where even the most steadfast soul may be undone by the very ideals it seeks to serve.

Widely regarded as Conrad’s finest longer work, Nostromo combines a richly layered narrative with a penetrating examination of power, wealth, and the illusions that sustain them. Against a backdrop of revolution and imperial intrigue, Conrad crafts a timeless meditation on loyalty, identity, and the cost of integrity in a world governed by greed and transactional allegiances.

This Warbler Classics edition includes the essay “The Immense Indifference of Things” by Joyce Carol Oates and an extensive biographical timeline.

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was a Polish-born British writer who ranks amongst the greatest English novelists and stylists. His work draws on two adventuresome decades he spent at sea in the merchant marines, and, briefly, as a seaman on a steamboat in the Belgian Congo. Few other authors have written about the sea with such imagination, energy, and moral depth.

Joyce Carol Oates (1938–) is an acclaimed American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet whose prolific career has spanned six decades. She has published forty-five novels and numerous collections of short fiction and poetry, essays, and other work. Oates’s novels Black Water, What I Lived For, and Blonde, as well as a collection of short stories, Lovely, Dark, Deep, were Pulitzer Prize finalists. She has won many awards for her writing, among them the National Book Award, two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and the Jerusalem Prize.