Lord Jim

Jim, a young British seaman, becomes first mate on the Patna, a ship full of pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the hajj. When the ship starts rapidly taking on water and disaster seems imminent, Jim joins his captain and other crew members in abandoning the ship and its passengers. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to terms with his past.

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is 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. Gripping and psychologically sophisticated, Conrad's diverse characters seek meaning but also fame and fortune in a world quite suddenly shrunk to navigable proportions during the era of European colonial expansion. Few other works have seared this fraught history into the world's conscience with such lasting impact. Conrad died in 1924 and is buried in Canterbury, England.