Almayer's Folly Book

First published in 1895, Almayer's Folly was Joseph Conrad's first novel, written within a year after he stepped onto the dock after his long career at sea.

Set in colonial Borneo, Almayer's Folly deals with many of the themes that he would return to again and again over his successful and influential career as a writer: a dependency on the seas and the river trade, colonialism, race - particularly as between the natives and the European colonists, distinctions between Eastern and Western cultures, and a fundamental, soul searching journey to determine and explore the dissimilarities between good and evil.

I tend to compare every Conrad novel to his 1899 masterpiece Heart of Darkness, but this novel bears the closest resemblance to his later work Victory, with its plot twists and intrigue. The most striking element of this book is the antagonistic relationship between Almayer, a European colonist blindly and pathetically paralyzed by his greed for gold and a psychologically misplaced racial identity and his Malayan wife who despises him. Repeatedly styled as a "witch" Mrs. Almayer and her husband vie for the love and affection of their daughter, Nina, who may be a personified Conradian metaphor for the duality of colonial tension.