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Title: Almayer's Folly (Everyman Paperback Classics) by Joseph Conrad, Owen Knowles ISBN: 0-460-87634-1 Publisher: Everymans Library Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 (9 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Overblown Romance, Unsympathetic Tragedy
Comment: This book by Conrad is a love story and a tragedy. The tragedy of Nina's father, Almayer--and the love story of Dain and Nina.
But Almayer's Folly is not as great a book as Lord Jim or Nigger of the 'Narcissus,' which are among the great masterpieces of literature.
There are several problems with Conrad's novel. For one thing, Almayer is not sympathetic enough to be a tragic hero. He just comes across as a real jerk. For another, the love story of Dain and Nina is so overblown and romantic as to be almost laughable, comic, and ridiculous. The characters and settings are hard to keep straight, as are the motivations of some of the doings.
Frankly, I found it quite difficult to take any of it seriously. It may be that we are just too distant from Conrad's Borneo in time and place, but this is not a problem in some of Conrad's other novels.
This is an inferior piece of literature. (Why the three stars in that case, you ask. Conrad's writing is so skilled in detail, and the setting and some of the other details so interesting, that the novel is absorbing--and mercifully short.)
Rating: 3
Summary: Almayer's rut
Comment: An alternative title for this novel could be Amayer's rut.
For that is the situation that the main protagonist in this novel finds himself in. Almayer is a European trader living in a
trading post somewhere in Indonesia or Malaysia with his daughter,a product of mixed marriage.
Almayer dreams of escaping to Europe after making himself wealthy and bringing his daughter with him also.
But as time drags on it becomes obvious that he is going nowhere with his life. He is not getting richer nor is he getting any younger. His own daughter ends up deserting him by eloping with a native who takes her to his own village.
Not being a pure European by blood she realizes that she would never be accepted as an equal among Europeans or the whites.
For this reason she chooses instead to live with the natives.
As for Almayer he remains as he was.
He is an example that one can find everywhere in the world.
Someone stuck in a situation going nowhere but always dreaming of getting out and changing his life.
Rating: 4
Summary: whitebedreamin
Comment: Almayer's folly is a powerful beginning to Conrad's second profession, writing. Since the story was written so close to Conrad's adventurous youth (the spring for his most powerful works), it provides the rawest expression of Conrad's views. Almayer, the prototype of Tuan Jim, takes the "leap" when he marries the Malay captive for promised wealth. This transgression drops his character into contact with the cold truths of nature; truths which dispel any artificial illusions or meanings. For Almayer, these illusions entailed sucess and fame in Europe, a place that he had never visited but only heard about from his mother. Superficially, this journey towards inner truth involves a journey into the wilds of Borneo, but,like in future Conrad works, we quickly realize that the journey is inward into the pysche of Almayer. Overall, an excellent introduction to Conrad.
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Title: An Outcast of the Islands (OXFORD WORLD'S CLASSICS) by Joseph Conrad, J. H. Stape, Hans Van Marle, Hans Van Marle ISBN: 0192838407 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf ISBN: 0156628708 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 24 September, 1990 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Victory by Joseph Conrad ISBN: 0375400478 Publisher: Unknown Publisher - Being Researched Pub. Date: 20 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: A Passage to India by E. M. Forster ISBN: 0156711427 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: December, 1984 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Colonial Harem (Theory and History of Literature, Vol 21) by Malek Alloula, Wlad Godzich, Barbara Harlow ISBN: 0816613842 Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr (Txt) Pub. Date: May, 1986 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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