Almayer Folly Joseph Conrad The Whale Books Books
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Almayer’s Folly, Joseph Conrad’s first novel, is a tale of personal tragedy as well as a broader meditation on the evils of colonialism. Set in the lush jungle of Borneo in the late 1800s, it tells of the Dutch merchant Kaspar Almayer, whose dreams of riches for his beloved daughter, Nina, collapse under the weight of his own greed and prejudice. Nadine Gordimer writes in her Introduction, “Conrad’s writing is lifelong questioning . . . What was ‘Almayer’s Folly’? The pretentious house never lived in? His obsession with gold? His obsessive love for his daughter, whose progenitors, the Malay race, he despised? All three?” Conrad established in Almayer’s Folly the themes of betrayal, isolation, and colonialism that he would explore throughout the rest of his life and work.
Almayer Folly Joseph Conrad The Whale Books Books
If you admire the best of Conrad, you should read this apprentice effort, actually his first, if only to see the distance he covered between it and, say, LORD JIM.F.R. Leavis found the fitting epithet when he called ALMAYER "adjectival". On the other hand, Conrad was learning his craft and, even more worrying, writing in his third language, having begun life as a Polish speaker and jumping to French before he started English as a British merchant seaman.
It's a tangled yarn, to be sure, but not unremittingly unreadable as so many first novels are. OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS, the next novel, isn't much better and is longer, not a positive. The Carol Reed movie of OUTCAST, though it departs from the plot, is preferable as entertainment, if not as enlightenment.
Conrad begins with NARCISSUS and, in spite of a gaggle of negative critics (including the usually perspicacious Leavis), reaches greatness with HEART OF DARKNESS. After that it's one masterpiece after another until THE ROVER and a few other late novels that are as weak as ALMAYER and OUTCAST, not entirely surprising since the law of diminishing returns applies to novelists as well as everything else.
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Almayer Folly Joseph Conrad The Whale Books Books Reviews
I received the book quickly and in good condition. I find the size of the letters a bit small. It was a gift for my husband who was looking for that book since a long time. He seemed very happy with it, so I am happy!
Almayer"s Folley is Conrad's most beautiful novel. The images are stunning with the daughter in white against the imposing green of the jungle!
Although not to be compared with his major works, this is nonetheless a most impressive first novel. Perhaps because he was already well into his thirties when he wrote and published it, the book contains all the major themes that one associates with Conrad. If one has not read any Conrad at all, I would recommend going to his great masterpieces first (VICTORY, NOSTROMO, THE SECRET AGENT, UNDER WESTERN EYES, HEART OF DARKNESS, THE NIGGER OF THE 'NARCISSUS', or LORD JIM). But for anyone who enjoys the work of Joseph Conrad, this book can hardly fail to fascinate.
A basic plot in Conrad's hands is amazing prose. Ignore the basic racism, unfortunately inherent in that era's literature, and enjoy the poetry of a master storyteller. I am impressed that Joseph Conrad is one of the few authors of his time, who gives all the different races an understanding of their own superiority over all the others.
This was Conrad's first novel, first published in 1895. It is the start of a series of novels and stories set in South East Asia. He had first hand knowledge of the region due to his own work as a merchant sailor. He also knew a lot, obviously, from Alfred Russell Wallace's travel account The Malay Archipelago.
Main themes of the story are the greed of colonialism and the racism of colonial routine. The story a young colonial Dutchman, grown up in Java, takes a job as a clerk in a trading firm in Makassar, on the island of Celebes, keen to get rich. A legendarily rich merchant captain picks him as son in law for his adopted Malay daughter from pirate background, offers him a job as station manager in Borneo, with prospects of a huge inheritance.
All goes wrong. The business fails over the years, not the least due to Almayer's lack of social intelligence. The fortune of the father in law dwindles. The station is unable to compete or even coexist with the local ruler and an Arab competitor. The marriage fails, partly because Almayer is a racist, partly because the wife has other ideas of the world, as one would expect from a Sulu pirate. He invests his emotions in a beautiful daughter and dreams of settling in Europe with her, after striking it rich. He dreams of a Borneo El Dorado. He understands nothing and nobody, certainly not his daughter, who can not see the charm in the prospect of settling in Amsterdam. She prefers to fall in love with a Balinese prince, betting on the local half of her heritage.
The historical background is the Dutch consolidation of their rule in the region that later became Indonesia. Borneo is yet hardly under control. A definition of British and Dutch interests and boundaries was still to come. Aceh was rebelling against Dutch rule, as they would later against Javanese rule. Bali is still independant and fiercely determined to remain so. That's why the Balinese prince shows up in Borneo, he is looking for gunpowder. Which in turn quickens Almayer's downfall, since the colonial rulers see him as an unreliable subject who trades with insurgents.
A problem with the novel is the total lack of redeeming features in the damned fool Almayer. He is so much not a positive hero, that his failure fails to touch us as tragedy. But the man is real. The world is full of such people.
Conrad's start into the writer's career was not the top of his achievements, but for me, it is one of my favorites among his works. This is partly due to a personal relation to the locations.
If you admire the best of Conrad, you should read this apprentice effort, actually his first, if only to see the distance he covered between it and, say, LORD JIM.
F.R. Leavis found the fitting epithet when he called ALMAYER "adjectival". On the other hand, Conrad was learning his craft and, even more worrying, writing in his third language, having begun life as a Polish speaker and jumping to French before he started English as a British merchant seaman.
It's a tangled yarn, to be sure, but not unremittingly unreadable as so many first novels are. OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS, the next novel, isn't much better and is longer, not a positive. The Carol Reed movie of OUTCAST, though it departs from the plot, is preferable as entertainment, if not as enlightenment.
Conrad begins with NARCISSUS and, in spite of a gaggle of negative critics (including the usually perspicacious Leavis), reaches greatness with HEART OF DARKNESS. After that it's one masterpiece after another until THE ROVER and a few other late novels that are as weak as ALMAYER and OUTCAST, not entirely surprising since the law of diminishing returns applies to novelists as well as everything else.
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