Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
"Victory was the last of Conrad's novels to be set in the Malay Archipelago, sub-titled 'An Island Tale', it tells the story of Axel Heyst who, damaged by his dead father's nihilistic philosophy, has retreated from the world of commerce and colonial exploration to live alone on the island of Samburan. But Heyst's solitary existence ends when he rescues an English girl from her rapacious patron and takes her off to his retreat. She in turn recalls him to love and to life, until the world breaks in on them once more with tragic consequences. In this love story Conrad created two of his psychologically most complex and compelling characters in a narrative of great erotic power." This new edition uses the English first edition text and has a new chronology and bibliography.Now a major motion picture from Miramax starring Sam Neill and Willem Defoe, Victory takes place in 1913 in the Dutch East Indies and tells the story of one man's battle for the woman he loves and the tragedy it leaves in its wake.
Synopsis
In Victory (1915), Conrad returns to the Malay Archipelago, to the setting of his first mature novel, Lord Jim, and in Axel Heyst he creates a hero who is in many ways similar to Jim, a noble altruist destroyed by his ideals. It is a story of action and high adventure coexisting with an exhaustive study of the psychology of a man who's philosophy of life is summed up in the dying words of his father: "Look on — make no sound."