Heart of Darkness is a complex exploration of the beliefs people hold on what constitutes a barbarian versus a civilized society and the stance on colonialism and racism that was part and parcel of European imperialism. Originally published as a three-part serial story, in Blackwood`s Magazine, the novella Heart of Darkness has been variously published and translated into many languages. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness as the sixty-seventh of the hundred best novels in English of the twentieth century.

Joseph Conrad (3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish author who wrote in English after settling in England. He was granted British nationality in 1886, but always considered himself a Pole. Conrad is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English, though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and always with a marked accent). He wrote stories and novels, often with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an indifferent universe. He was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-Englishsensibility into English literature.