Synopses & Reviews
Set in the islands of the Malay Archipelago,
Victory tells the story of a disillusioned Swede, Axel Heyst, who rescues Lena, a young English musician, from the clutches of a brutish German hotel owner. Seeking refuge at Heysts remote island retreat on Samburan, the couple is soon besieged by three villains dispatched by the enraged hotelier. The arrival on the island paradise of this trio of fiends sets off a terrifying series of events that ultimately ends in catastrophe.
“With Victory, Conrad inaugurated a new style and aesthetic,” writes Peter Lancelot Mallios in his Introduction. “The tremendous literary sophistication to be found in Victory does not result in the exclusion of the popular reader.”
The text of this Modern Library Paperback Classic was set from the first British edition, published by Methuen & Co. in 1915.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Synopsis
Joseph Conrad possessed a matchless gift for embodying life as it is lived under extreme physical and psychological pressure. Victory, his last masterpiece, tells the story of Axel Heyst, a radically isolated, philosophically minded soul living apart on a remote Pacific island, who performs two acts of instinctive kindness and thereby embroils himself in storms of greed and vengeance, and of love and mercy.
When Heyst impulsively rescues a young English musician, Lena, from the predations of a lascivious hotel owner named Schomberg, he cannot know that she will be the means of releasing him from the emotional detachment with which he has long barricaded himself. Their affair does not last long, however, once the enraged Schomberg sends agents of revenge to invade Heyst's island retreat. Out of the maelstrom of violence and tragedy that ensues, Conrad produces a profound, unflinching meditation on human connection and redemption.
Synopsis
Joseph Conrad's last major work, Victory is the story of Axel Heyst, a Swedish baron who wanders the islands of the Dutch East Indies in search of solitude and utter detachment from humanity. Because of a single act of kindness, however, Heyst is caught up despite himself in an increasingly tangled web of slander, love, violence, and revenge, all in the shadow of the dull red glow of a local volcano. After rescuing a young English girl, Lena, from exploitation by the innkeeper Schomberg, Heyst finally begins to find a way out of his emotional isolation, only to find himself the object of Schomberg's deadly hatred. In a poignantly ironic twist of fate, it is the spark of human connection in Heyst's empty life that sets off the final eruption of violence and tragedy.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. xliv-xlv).
About the Author
Peter Lancelot Mallios is an assistant professor of English and American Studies at the University of Maryland.
From the Trade Paperback edition.