Under Western Eyes (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) »

Most readers know Joseph Conrad for creating Marlow's harrowing journey through the African Congo in Heart of Darkness. Conrad was adept at capturing the physical and cultural experiences he gleaned from 15 years at sea, but he also wrote political thrillers, essays, and plays based on his own short stories. His best works tend to be brief, but pack in a remarkable perspicacity about humanity's deepest faults.

Under Western Eyes (1910) is a tale of two cities—St. Petersburg and Geneva—and of political and moral revolutions. It is one of Joseph Conrad’s most suspenseful works and his most politically and psychologically insightful. Set in 1904, it opens with an act Conrad calls “characteristic of modern Russia”: the assassination of a high official of the autocratic tsarist regime. Under Western Eyes probes deeply into that repressive society where unremitting tyranny provokes revolutionary terrorism. Published five years after Russia’s abortive 1905 Revolution, the novel clearly anticipates the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.