Exciting but profound, lucid but bewildering, Heart of Darkness is Conrad’s most famous work. More critical attention has probably been paid to it, word for word, than to any other piece of modern prose. So what is it about this short novel that has captivated critics and readers for so long and caused so much to be written about it? In this authoritative and engaging new study, Graham Bradshaw – who has lectured and written about Conrad for 30 years – draws on the most interesting critics to present his own vision of Heart of Darkness and to show why the novel’s peculiarly dark and intense vision of life has been so frequently misunderstood. 

Professor Graham Bradshaw is the author of Shakespeare’s Scepticism, described by Harold Bloom as “one of the half-dozen or so best modern books about Shakespeare” and numerous other books and essays. A former Professor of English at Chuo University in Tokyo and before that a Reader at the University of St Andrews, he began his career at Cambridge. He is now an Honorary Professor of English and Fine Arts at the University of Queensland.