306. Joseph Conrad: From Russian Exile To The Heart of Darkness

Just a little warning for this episode of Empire. It will contain references to suicide. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Drumple. Settle back because I'm going to tell you a story.

In November 1880. 89, just as the chugging compound engines of steamships were beginning to take the wind out of the elegant sails of the great rake masted clippers, an out-of-work Polish sea captain, unable to find a command in London, signed up with a Belgian shipping company. A job had just turned up in the Belgian Congo. The previous occupant of the post had been killed in mysterious circumstances, and Captain Konrad Korzinowski soon found himself setting sail down the African coast. If only you'd seen all the tin boxes and revolvers, he wrote to a friend, the high boots, and all the bottles of medicine.

Now this was the voyage which would produce one of the most famous of all books on colonialism, The Heart of Darkness, published under the name the captain assumed when he took British citizenship, and which he later chose to write under. Joseph Conrad. And here to tell us all about Conrad is our old friend, both on and off the pod. Maya Jasonov and I have just tried to stop Anita running off with my friend and inviting her out for a drink on her own without me to gossip about her. purpose of going out for a drink with Maya since she's got all the dirt on you, isn't it Maya?

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