THE FOLIO SOCIETY

While serving as a mate aboard a steamer in the Dutch East Indies in the late 1880s Joseph Conrad met a washed-up Dutchman, Olmeijer, who became the inspiration for his first novel. But for this encounter, Conrad's career as a writer might never have got underway.

Almayer's 'folly' is not only his dream house - which starts to decay before it is ever completed - but also his stupidity, and ultimately the madness into which he descends. Once feared and influential, now weak and isolated, he is the only 'white man' living in the remote river settlement of Sambir with his Malay wife, whom he married out of greed, and their beautiful daughter Nina. Along with his building plans, his dreams of wealth and happiness gradually unravel and when Nina falls in love with a native, Almayer rejects her, blind to his own hypocrisy. The volume also contains five short stories, known collectively as Tales of Unrest.