This short story from Joseph Conrad is among his best. The man's head and shoulders emerged above the deck, over which were scattered various tools of his trade and a few pieces of machinery. He was doing some repairs to the engines. At the sound of our footsteps he raised anxiously a grimy face with a pointed chin and a tiny fair moustache. What could be seen of his delicate features under the black smudges appeared to me wasted and livid in the greenish shade of the enormous tree spreading its foliage over the launch moored close to the bank.
Almayer's Folly is Joseph Conrad's first novel and was published in 1895. The novel centers on the Dutch trader Kaspar Almayer and the events leading to and surrounding his life in the jungles of Borneo. It is set in the late 1800s. Kaspar Almayer is a Dutch merchant taken under the wing of the wealthy Captain Lingard. Desirious of one day inheriting Captain Lingard's wealth the young Almayer agrees to marry his adopted Malay child and run Lingard's trading post in Sambir in the jungles of Borneo. Reuploaded by Kahena
The fourth entry in Perry's World War I series finds chaplain Joseph Reavley three years into his service in the trenches of Ypres on the western front. The British army has suffered appalling losses, and the men are exhausted, hungry, and afraid. Now an incompetent officer, the son of a general, unwilling to take advice from more experienced soldiers, is sending his men to certain death by making wrongheaded, uninformed decisions. When the officer's body is discovered, it falls to Joseph to determine whether he was killed by his own men. The investigation is complicated when Joseph's sister, Judith, a fearless ambulance driver, is drawn into the dispute.
Colin Thubron seems to be a writer undaunted by immensity, either of place or plot. He has written, memorably, about China (Behind the Wall) and contemporary Russia (Among the Russians). Here, in his latest book, which happens to be a novel, he cheerfully takes on Joseph Conrad and magic realism, transplanting a Heart of Darkness narrative to the jungles of Peru, and does so with a precision and a brevity whose effects linger in the imagination.
Chance and bad weather led Deborah St. James and the vicar of Winslough to London's National Gallery to view Leonardo da Vinci's study for his Virgin and Child. The vicar's comment that Joseph is missing from the picture strikes a chord with Deborah, whose inability to bear a child has caused her deep grief and widened the growing rift between her and her husband. Comforted by the vicar's words and affected by his description of the solitude and opportunities for contemplation surrounding his northern village, Deborah persuades Simon to take her on a country holiday in Lancashire where she can regain her peace of mind and see the vicar again.
Reuploaded by Kahena
