JOSEPH CONRAD: A LIFE

OUT OF THE FOG
JOSEPH CONRAD: A LIFE

By Zdzislaw Najder
(Translated by Halina Najder)
(Boydell & Brewer 745pp)
THE SEVERAL LIVES OF JOSEPH CONRAD
By John Stape
(William Heinemann 378pp)

IF EXILE AND alienation are the defining characteristics of twentieth-century literature, Joseph Conrad is the quintessential twentieth-century writer. From Roman poets to modern playwrights, many have written well in places and languages other than their own, but Conrad was more deracinated than most. The man who has been called the best French novelist in English (a  compliment also paid to Henry James and Ford Madox Ford) was a Pole from what is now the Ukraine, stripped by circumstance of his culture, his class, his family, his language, his country, and even his name. But against these blows of fate Conrad  fought back in original