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Almayer's Folly: A Story of an Eastern River (Modern Library Classics)

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Manufacturer: Modern Library
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Almayer’s Folly, Joseph Conrad’s first novel, is a tale of personal tragedy as well as a broader meditation on the evils of colonialism. Set in the lush jungle of Borneo in the late 1800s, it tells of the Dutch merchant Kaspar Almayer, whose dreams of riches for his beloved daughter, Nina, collapse under the weight of his own greed and prejudice. Nadine Gordimer writes in her Introduction, “Conrad’s writing is lifelong questioning . . . What was ‘Almayer’s Folly’? The pretentious house never lived in? His obsession with gold? His obsessive love for his daughter, whose progenitors, the Malay race, he despised? All three?” Conrad established in Almayer’s Folly the themes of betrayal, isolation, and colonialism that he would explore throughout the rest of his life and work.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780375760143
ISBN: 0375760148
Label: Modern Library
Manufacturer: Modern Library
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: 2002-10-08
Publisher: Modern Library
Release Date: 2002-10-08
Studio: Modern Library


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CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Colonial delusions
Comment: This was Conrad's first novel, first published in 1895. It is the start of a series of novels and stories set in South East Asia. He had first hand knowledge of the region due to his own work as a merchant sailor. He also knew a lot, obviously, from Alfred Russell Wallace's travel account The Malay Archipelago.

Main themes of the story are the greed of colonialism and the racism of colonial routine. The story: a young colonial Dutchman, grown up in Java, takes a job as a clerk in a trading firm in Makassar, on the island of Celebes, keen to get rich. A legendarily rich merchant captain picks him as son in law for his adopted Malay daughter from pirate background, offers him a job as station manager in Borneo, with prospects of a huge inheritance.

All goes wrong. The business fails over the years, not the least due to Almayer's lack of social intelligence. The fortune of the father in law dwindles. The station is unable to compete or even coexist with the local ruler and an Arab competitor. The marriage fails, partly because Almayer is a racist, partly because the wife has other ideas of the world, as one would expect from a Sulu pirate. He invests his emotions in a beautiful daughter and dreams of settling in Europe with her, after striking it rich. He dreams of a Borneo El Dorado. He understands nothing and nobody, certainly not his daughter, who can not see the charm in the prospect of settling in Amsterdam. She prefers to fall in love with a Balinese prince, betting on the local half of her heritage.

The historical background is the Dutch consolidation of their rule in the region that later became Indonesia. Borneo is yet hardly under control. A definition of British and Dutch interests and boundaries was still to come. Aceh was rebelling against Dutch rule, as they would later against Javanese rule. Bali is still independant and fiercely determined to remain so. That's why the Balinese prince shows up in Borneo, he is looking for gunpowder. Which in turn quickens Almayer's downfall, since the colonial rulers see him as an unreliable subject who trades with insurgents.

A problem with the novel is the total lack of redeeming features in the damned fool Almayer. He is so much not a positive hero, that his failure fails to touch us as tragedy. But the man is real. The world is full of such people.

Conrad's start into the writer's career was not the top of his achievements, but for me, it is one of my favorites among his works. This is partly due to a personal relation to the locations.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The hypocrisy of the white man
Comment: This excellent short novel is very representative for Joseph Conrad's work. Its main theme of the foolish, dangerous and deadly dreams of colonialists was also treated in his short story `An Outpost of Progress' (in 'Tales of Unrest') and in his masterpiece `Heart of Darkness'.

The main character in this story dreams of finding a mysterious treasure in order to be able to return to his homeland and live for the rest of his life in `untold wealth'.
For the indigenous, he is not more than another `white man that comes to us to trade, with prayers on his lips and loaded guns in his hands.' He shows `the same manifestations of love and hate and of sordid greed chasing the uncertain dollar in all its multifarious and vanishing shapes.'
He is bitterly confronted with `the savage mood which civilization could never destroy'.

For Conrad, `no two beings understand each other', so certainly not the `savage' and the `white man'.
More, the `uncompromising sincerity of Malay kinsmen' stands in sharp contrast with `the sleek hypocrisy of white people with their vivid but foolish dreams'.

This novel has not the same high standard as `Heart of Darkness', but should not be missed.

Customer Rating:
Summary: A Visually Astounding Masterwork
Comment: Almayer's Folly was Joseph Conrad's first novel. I have nothing to compare it to, as I have not read his signature work, Heart of Darkness, nor any of his other lesser known stories and novels. I came into the possession of Almayer's Folly by chance; one of my friend's mothers had taken the book from the DISCARD pile in the library and urged me to take it from her.

I'm glad that fate has brought me this book. It's the story of Almayer-- a Dutchman who has been born and raised in Colonial Indonesia. He spends his life idolizing Europe and Western ideals, scorning his homeland. Yet he never once ventures to Europe. In fact, most of his interactions with Europeans often find him the butt of their jokes. He doesn't fare much better with the Malay natives and Arab merchants--while often treated as a superior by virtue of his race, they still regard him as a fool.

Almayer has nothing but haughty contempt for the native Malay culture of Borneo. Even with his Malay wife and half-Malay daughter, he keeps a Imperialist's distance from the culture which surrounds him. Feeling no true kinship with his European heritage, and scorning the one with which he is most familiar, he's a case study in the pathologies which arise from Colonialism.

Essentially, Almayer is a semi-sympathetic buffoon. His life is full of grandiose wishes and little reward. He yearns for great treasure, yet is no warrior and a mediocre businessman. He lacks the cunning and courage of many other characters--A Malay Rajah, a slave, an Arab trader, and a swashbuckling British compatriot, are just a few of the characters who outshine Almayer.

Yet, its his weaknesses which make his placement as the central character one of the most endearing aspects of the book. Because he is such a fragile, inept person, we become more comfortable with the savageness, intelligence, and verve in the other principal characters.

Almayer's undramatic life serves as the backdrop for the love story between his daughter and a handsome Balinese Prince. Her choice to eschew a comfortable European upbringing and to align herself with the romantic, savage culture of her Malay mother is the emotional keystone in the novel.

I was often astounded by Conrad's rich evocation of the setting and characters in colonial Indonesia. I'm not much for florid, lush descriptions, but Conrad sets himself above the heap of dilettantes and impostors: his ornate narrative holds together, forming a monumental, often breathtaking vision of Colonial Indonesia. The dynamic characters, expansive forests, and socio-political themes all receive the same rigorous, beautiful treatment.

One drawback is that, because Conrad's talents are so visible and easy to explain, the mystery and magic in great pieces of art is obscured in this work. Furthermore, his characters seem to vacillate unnaturally between mythical, cliched representations of themes and truly organic, dynamic beings. That being said, the novel was a thoroughly enjoyable read and I am excited to soon discover some of Conrad's more well known works.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Overblown Romance, Unsympathetic Tragedy
Comment: This book by Conrad is a love story and a tragedy. The tragedy of Nina's father, Almayer--and the love story of Dain and Nina.

But Almayer's Folly is not as great a book as Lord Jim or Nigger of the 'Narcissus,' which are among the great masterpieces of literature.

There are several problems with Conrad's novel. For one thing, Almayer is not sympathetic enough to be a tragic hero. He just comes across as a real jerk. For another, the love story of Dain and Nina is so overblown and romantic as to be almost laughable, comic, and ridiculous. The characters and settings are hard to keep straight, as are the motivations of some of the doings.

Frankly, I found it quite difficult to take any of it seriously. It may be that we are just too distant from Conrad's Borneo in time and place, but this is not a problem in some of Conrad's other novels.

This is an inferior piece of literature. (Why the three stars in that case, you ask. Conrad's writing is so skilled in detail, and the setting and some of the other details so interesting, that the novel is absorbing--and mercifully short.)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Almayer's rut
Comment: An alternative title for this novel could be Amayer's rut.
For that is the situation that the main protagonist in this novel finds himself in. Almayer is a European trader living in a
trading post somewhere in Indonesia or Malaysia with his daughter,a product of mixed marriage.
Almayer dreams of escaping to Europe after making himself wealthy and bringing his daughter with him also.
But as time drags on it becomes obvious that he is going nowhere with his life. He is not getting richer nor is he getting any younger. His own daughter ends up deserting him by eloping with a native who takes her to his own village.
Not being a pure European by blood she realizes that she would never be accepted as an equal among Europeans or the whites.
For this reason she chooses instead to live with the natives.
As for Almayer he remains as he was.
He is an example that one can find everywhere in the world.
Someone stuck in a situation going nowhere but always dreaming of getting out and changing his life.

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