Three short stories from Joseph Conrad. The Lagoon is about race and strangers. Typhoon about… a typhoon, with an incredible description of this force of nature destroying a boat. The last short story, The Secret Sharer, is about a captain who conceals on board a man who has killed another, a man who looks so much like himself that he appears to be looking in a mirror. Three stories of boats, nature and solitary men. A little dive into Conrad that I hadn’t read in a while.
“They would have preferred to spend the night somewhere else than on this lagoon of weird aspect and ghostly reputation. Moreover, they disliked Arsat, first as a stranger, and also because he who repairs a ruined house, and dwells in it, proclaims that he is not afraid to live amongst the spirits that haunt the places abandoned by mankind. Such a man can disturb the course of fate by glances or words; while his familiar ghosts are not easy to propitiate by casual wayfarers upon whom they long to wreak the malice of their human master. White men care not for such things, being unbelievers and in league with the Father of Evil, who leads them unharmed through the invisible dangers of this world. To the warnings of the righteous they oppose an offensive pretence of disbelief. What is there to be done?”
Contents
The Lagoon / Typhoon / The Secret Sharer
This selection taken from The Secret Sharer and Other Stories, Penguin Classics 2014, and Typhoon and Other Stories, Penguin Classics 2007.
The Lagoon first published in 1897, Typhoon in 1902 and The Secret Sharer in 1910.