Lord Jim

Jim, a young British officer who dreams of heroism, is chief mate of the Patna, an old steamer carrying eight hundred Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. One night the ship strikes something in the dark, and convinced she is about to sink, Jim jumps into a lifeboat with the other officers, leaving the pilgrims behind. The ship does not sink, and the disgrace follows him across the East.

Told largely by Conrad's narrator Marlow, Lord Jim (1900) follows Jim to a remote Malay settlement where he gets a second chance and becomes Tuan Jim, respected lord of the people. It is a profound novel about honour, cowardice and whether one can ever escape a single moment of weakness. It pairs well with Heart of Darkness.

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was born Józef Korzeniowski to Polish parents in today's Ukraine. His father was exiled for patriotic activities, and Conrad was orphaned at eleven. At sixteen he went to sea from Marseille, and he spent twenty years as a sailor, rising to captain in the British merchant navy.

A voyage up the Congo in 1890 marked him for life and led to Heart of Darkness. He began writing in English, his third language, and became one of its great novelists with Lord Jim and Nostromo. His books ask what people do when no one is watching.