The sailor Marlow recounts his journey up the Congo River to retrieve the enigmatic ivory agent Kurtz, confronting the brutality and moral emptiness of colonialism. A dark voyage into what men become far from restraint.
When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells: “‘The Heart of Darkness,’ he had never heard of before nor ‘The Madonna of the Future’--no doubt if they were indeed stories, they were by post Victorian authors.”
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón: “'Have you read Conrad? Heart of Darkness?' 'Three times.'”
The White Album by Joan Didion: “I remember my real joy at discovering for the first time how language worked, at discovering, for example, that the central line of Heart of Darkness was a postscript.”
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger: “I'm hanging out in the club Library, eating canapés and reading a sumptuously bound and probably never opened first edition of Heart of Darkness.”
Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama: “"I'm trying to tell Brother Barack here about this racist tract he's reading." He held up a copy of Heart of Darkness, evidence for the court.”
Journey Without Maps by Graham Greene: “Same passage, invoking the real Conrad novella by its famous phrase.”
In Search of a Character by Graham Greene: “Reading Conrad - the volume called Youth for the sake of The Heart of Darkness - the first time since I abandoned him about 1932.”
Italo Calvino by Martin McLaughlin: “Les Fleurs du mal and Heart of Darkness are cited, as well as Sade's Justine and Freud's interpretation”
The Anatomy Lesson by Philip Roth: “For the tongue it was like the journey up the river in "Heart of Darkness." The mysterious stillness, the miles of silence, the tongue creeping Conradianly on toward Kurtz”
Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver: “I threw Heart of Darkness over my shoulder at the first bark of temptation and went out on a date.”