English Literature Club: books, essays,reviews.

2021-03-20 12:58:49 Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
A hundred years ago a seaman’s life was full of danger, but Jim, the first mate on board the Patna, is not afraid of danger. He is young, strong, confident of his bravery. He dreams of great adventures - and the chance to show the world what a hero he is. But the sea is no place for dreamers. When the chance comes, on a calm moonlit night in the Indian Ocean, Jim fails the test, and his world falls to pieces around him. He disappears into the jungles of south-east Asia, searching for a way to prove himself, once and for all… Open / Comment

2021-03-18 17:41:14 Crime and Punishment
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammeled individual will, Raskolnikov, and impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the Tsars, commits an act of murder and theft and sets into motion a story which, for its excruciating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its profundity of characterization and vision, is almost unequaled in the literatures of the world. Open / Comment

2021-03-13 22:33:19 Raffles: The Black Mask
Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman
by E. W. Hornung

Since his friend and partner in crime, A. J. Raffles, jumped into the Mediterranean, Bunny Manders has scraped along as best he can. At Raffles’s side, he was witness to, and participant in, the most ingenious burglaries the underworld had ever seen. Without him, Bunny is a struggling ex-convict, so down on his luck that he answers an ad seeking a male nurse and companion for a notoriously rude invalid. But when he lights the old man’s Sullivan cigarette and sees a perfect smoke ring float into the air, Bunny cries out in delight. Raffles is back, and ready for adventure. In the second installment in E. W. Hornung’s crackerjack crime series, England’s greatest jewel thief is up to all of his old tricks and many ingenious new ones—none so spectacular as turning Queen Victoria herself into an accomplice. Open / Comment

2021-03-01 17:35:45 Nostromo — A Tale of the Seaboard
by Joseph Conrad
A gripping tale of capitalist exploitation and rebellion, set amid the mist-shrouded mountains of a fictional South American republic, employs flashbacks and glimpses of the future to depict the lure of silver and its effects on men. Conrad’s deep moral consciousness and masterful narrative technique are at their best in this, one of his greatest works. Open / Comment

2021-02-26 17:51:54 The Secret Agent, A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad
A triangle of conspiracy is built, then destroyed, by the self-interest of its participants. Mr. Verloc, employed by a foreign embassy to incriminate an anarchist group, instead destroys his family, his illusions, and his own life in a terrorist act gone utterly wrong. Conrad’s ironic and troubling novel exposes political extremism and the strength-and vanity-of illusion. Open / Comment