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Loading... Tales of Hearsay (1925)by Joseph Conrad
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. An odds and ends collection of short-stories which spans Conrad's literary career published shortly after his death. It works surprisingly well. 'The Warrior's Soul' and 'Prince Roman' are perhaps the least interesting, although the latter draws on Conrad's Polish heritage. 'The Black Mate', an early story, shows Conrad had a great sense of humour. The Captain, a fervent spiritualist, anticipates the superstitious First Mate, Ransome, in 'The Shadow Line'. Best of all is 'The Tale', Conrad's only story about the First World War. A Royal Navy ship on patrol encounters a ship from a neutral country, which is suspected of supplying German U-boats. The story is, quite literally, about the 'fog of war' and has a savage twist at the end which had me thinking long after I had finished it. no reviews | add a review
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Classic Literature.
Fiction.
Short Stories.
HTML: Although English was not his native tongue, Polish-born Joseph Conrad honed his language skills over his lifetime and would eventually become enshrined as one of the masters of English literature. As a sailor, he spent his free time during months-long voyages at sea writing stories, letters, and later, novels such as The Heart of Darkness. However, he regarded short stories as his favorite form, and the literary gems collected in Tales of Hearsay confirm that he was a remarkably skilled writer of short fiction. .No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.912Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1901-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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The third story, "The Tale," is not that, it turns out. It is a confession and highlights a naval commander's inner guilt generated by an act of vengeance during wartime. And the last story, "The Black Mate," is a tale of coming to terms with the supernatural through expediency. Its almost whimsical ironic end itself is upended just a few paragraphs later into a warning against self possession.
The landscape and setting for these tales is different from that of his great works set in the tropics or on the China Sea. These landscapes tell of ice and snow. The forests are barren, in contrast to the jungles and growth of the tropics, which are so thick that in their own teeming richness of life they seem to squeeze the spirit from the bodies of the Europeans caught up in them. Funny, that surrounded by life in the tropics, Conrad's heroes seem more alone than they ever are on plains of European Russia or the brutal northern seas.
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