Added by: otherwordly | Karma: 222.41 | Fiction literature | 11 August 2008
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Book Description
NEW LIGHT ON THE PAST
Conrad Stargard, a twentieth century Pole marooned in thirteenth century Poland, had just ten years to prevent the Mongol hordes from slaughtering everyone in Poland.
So he "invented" all the modern advances--things like prefabricated housing, Playboy Clubs, steam engines, universal education, cloth factories, and belly dancing.
But wars are fought by warriors, not strong economies, and Conrad needed the very best. So he set out to create an army . . .
Added by: otherwordly | Karma: 222.41 | Fiction literature | 11 August 2008
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Somehow, Conrad found himself under investigation by the Inquisition, got himself knighted, was granted his own fief, and made a few enemies.
Somehow, he had to round up a few vassals, build himself a city, and figure out how to survive armed combat against the Champion of the Teutonic Knights, one of the Toughest Men Alive.
Somehow, Conrad Stargard, faithful Roman Catholic and stalwart Socialist of the Peoples Republic of Poland, 20th Century, had been marooned in Poland, A.D. 1231.
Added by: otherwordly | Karma: 222.41 | Fiction literature | 11 August 2008
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Book Description THE RIGHT MAN FOR THE JOB
One moment Conrad Schwartz was a hungover hiker in the mountains of modern Poland, the next he was running for his life from an angry Teutonic knight.
At first Conrad just thought he'd stumbled across a mad hermit. But several days of ever stranger events convinced him that he had somehow been stranded in A.D 1231.
And that meant Conrad had to turn Medieval Poland into the most powerful country in the world. Otherwise the Mongols were destined to destroy it-in just ten years!
Drawing on a rich oral tradition, numerous trips to the region, and the
latest scholarship available on this important but little-studied era,
scholar and author David Conrad explores the people, places, and ideas
that made up this trio of empires.
Written in 1899 by Joseph Conrad (Teodor Józef Konrad Nałęcz-Korzeniowski),
Heart of Darkness is a fascinating fin de siecle critique of colonialism and man's greed. Conrad draws on his own adventures for the plot. The story's main narrator is Marlow, a merchant seaman who pilots a steamship upriver in what is largely assumed to be the Belgian Congo. He finds the scramble for Africa well underway, with Europeans desperately competing to make their fortunes from ivory. Marlow's journey takes him into the interior of this mysterious silent continent. After a dangerous passage he finally arrives at the company's most remote trading station. It is reigned over by Kurtz, a white man who seems to have become a kind of God figure to the local people. Marlow is fascinated by him, preferring his messianic ravings to the petty treachery and mercenarism of the other white traders. On the journey back, Kurtz dies, whispering “the horror, the horror”.
The interpretation of these words has perplexed readers ever since and the book has prompted a diverse range of readings from the psychoanalytical, that sees the novella as a metaphor for the journey into the subconscious, to feminist readings that examine how Conrad excludes female characters and focuses on the male consciousness.
Conrad wrote; “My task is, above all, to make you see”. So did he intend this novella to provoke a discussion of the immorality and rapacity at the centre of colonialism? Was he questioning the hero's welcome given to those famous explorers who came back from “civilising” Africa, as they saw it? Or was he, as the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe put it, “guilty of preposterous and perverse arrogance in reducing Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind?”
