Exciting but profound, lucid but bewildering, Heart of Darkness is Conrad’s most famous work. Probably more critical attention has been paid to it, word for word, than to any other piece of modern prose. So what is it about this short novel that has captivated critics and readers for so long and caused so much to be written about it? In this authoritative and engaging study, Graham Bradshaw - who has lectured and written about Conrad for 30 years - draws on the most interesting critics to present his own vision of Heart of Darkness and to show why the novel’s peculiarly dark and intense vision of life has been so frequently misunderstood.