Almayer's Folly

Kaspar Almayer is a Dutch merchant taken under the wing of the wealthy Captain Lingard. Hoping to one day inherit Captain Lingard's wealth Almayer marries his daughter. The marriage is loveless, Captain Lingard loses much of his fortune searching for a hidden treasure, and Almayer's ventures continually fail. The rest of the novel concerns Almayer's conflicting desires: his love for his daughter and his desire for money and self-redemption.

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is considered as one of the best authors in the English language, despite the fact that he did not speak English effectively until his twenties. He became known as a master prose stylist who introduced a non-English sensibility into English literature. He authored novels and novellas, many of which take place at sea, about crises of human identity in what he perceived as an indifferent, incomprehensible, and amoral world. Conrad is regarded as a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, while his works also incorporate elements of nineteenth-century realism. His storytelling style and anti-heroic characters, such as Lord Jim, impacted a number of authors. Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew on his native Poland's national experiences-during nearly all of his life, parcelled out among three occupying empires-as well as his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world, including imperialism and colonialism, and that profoundly explore the human psyche. Apollo took his kid to the Austrian-controlled region of Poland in December 1867, which had enjoyed significant internal freedom and self-government for the previous two years. After seeing Lwow and numerous smaller towns, they relocated to Krakow (Poland's capital until 1596), which is also in Austrian Poland, on February 20, 1869.