Sunday, February 18, 2007

Talk of the Day- Heart of Darkness

"Written in 1899 by Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness is a fascinating fin de siecle critique of colonialism and man's greed...

Conrad wrote; “My task is, above all, to make you see”. So did he intend this novella to provoke a discussion of the immorality and rapacity at the centre of colonialism? Was he questioning the hero's welcome given to those famous explorers who came back from “civilising” Africa, as they saw it? Or was he, as the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe put it, “guilty of preposterous and perverse arrogance in reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind?”


Listen to podcast discussion from BBC.

You can download an audio version of the book here.

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