From nothing else that I have ever read have I gotten what every book of Conrad has given me." -Ernest Hemingway, Transatlantic Review, 1924 "What does it mean to give oneself to a tempting darkness? To a tempting character? What happens when that power that once tempted the mind and then was received by the mind, finally betrays that mind? Dark thoughts indeed." -From Schwager's Introduction The steaming jungles of Africa contain enough bloody ivory to bankroll an empire, but it takes a strong Company agent to manage the climate and the unhappy native laborers, many of whom are still cannibals. The most successful agent of them all is the disconcerting man known as "Kurtz." But Kurtz has been sick, and his efficient (or brutal, depending on who is asked) methods can't be ignored any longer. So Charles Marlow leaves the tidy offices of London with a new steamboat command, and sets out to find this Mr. Kurtz and bring him back to civilization-out of the disease, neglect, and enveloping presence of an immense heart of darkness