Set Of Book

Available for free from the always-reliable Gutenberg Project. This version displayed well on my old-school Kindle. Also available free of charge from the University of Adelaide, archive.org, manybooks.net, free-ebooks.net, and the inevitable Google Books.

The longest story in this collect, "The Duel", was the basis for the 1977 Ridley Scott movie "The Duellists", starring Harvey Keitel and David Carradine. I haven't seen this movie and I don't know if it is any good.

A very enjoyable set of short stories from the time when people thought that a 25-page story was short.

Many of the stories are like alternate takes on Conrad's most famous works -- "Gaspar Ruiz" in Heart of Darkness territory (figuratively, not geographically), "An Informer" same for The Secret Agent or Under Western Eyes, and "The Brute" for any number of well-known sea-going stories.

"The Duel" is the longest story in the book and also the best, IMHO. The ending of this story had me turning pages like I was reading this year's hot suspense novel.

Conrad sometimes writes sentences that have to be read two or three times. This I usually consider an unforgivable flaw. But stick with him, because then he'll come out with a sentence that will knock you flat with its clarity and plain-spoken drama, like

"Don't you know yet," he said, "that an idle and selfish class loves to see mischief being made, even if it is made at its own expense? Its own life being all a matter of pose and gesture, it is unable to realize the power and the danger of a real movement and of words that have no sham meaning...." ["The Informer", Kindle location 932]

and

No man succeeds in everything he undertakes. In that sense we are all failures. The great point is not to fail in ordering and sustaining the effort of our life. ["The Duel", Kindle location 2699]

Ditto the untranslated French -- usually a deal-breaker for me, but here something I felt I could put up with.

In summary, a great thing to have on your electronic device to prevent you from being in the situation where you're stuck somewhere with nothing to read -- the horror, the horror.