The Narcissus sails from Bombay for London with a crew that includes old Singleton, the shirking agitator Donkin, and James Wait, a Black sailor from the West Indies who joins late and announces that he is dying. His illness, real or feigned, divides the forecastle, and a ferocious gale off the Cape lays the ship on her side.
Conrad’s 1897 breakthrough, with its famous preface on the novelist’s task; the title and the narrator’s racial language are those of its time. Download the free EPUB.