Joseph Conrad's Eastern Voyages

Tales of Singapore and an East Borneo River.

The life of Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski reads like an adventure story, an adventure story written by somebody like Joseph Conrad.

The young Conrad dreamed of a life at sea and eventually became a British merchant seaman, working his way up from apprentice to captain on classic three-masted square-rigged barques. He would also become one of the most important novelists in the English language, and almost half of his life’s work is set in Southeast Asia. Conrad’s favourite destination was the vibrant, bustling port of Singapore as well as the remote ports of the Dutch East Indies, and his early works – Almayer’s Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, Lord Jim and The Rescue – are based on the people and places he encountered during his own voyages on the Vidar and other trading vessels that plied the waters of Singapore and the Indonesian archipelago. Burnet connects the fictional and real worlds in this fascinating introduction to Conrad’s life in Southeast Asia.