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Editorial Reviews. From Library Journal. This involved, philosophical novel is not for the casual Nostromo (Illustrated): A Tale of the Seaboard Kindle Edition.
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Binding Any. Costaguana has a long history of tyranny, revolution and warfare, but has recently experienced a period of stability under the dictator Ribiera. Charles Gould is a native Costaguanero of English descent who owns an important silver-mining concession near the key port of Sulaco. He is tired of the political instability in Costaguana and its concomitant corruption, and uses his wealth to support Ribiera's government, which he believes will finally bring stability to the country after years of misrule and tyranny by self-serving dictators.

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Instead, Gould's refurbished silver mine and the wealth it has generated inspires a new round of revolutions and self-proclaimed warlords, plunging Costaguana into chaos. Among others, the forces of the revolutionary General Montero invades Sulaco after securing the inland capital; Gould, adamant that his silver should not become spoil for his enemies, orders Nostromo, the trusted " Capataz de Cargadores " Head Longshoreman of Sulaco, to take it offshore so it can be sold into international markets. Nostromo is an Italian expatriate who has risen to his position through his bravery and daring exploits.

Nostromo is a commanding figure in Sulaco, respected by the wealthy Europeans and seemingly limitless in his abilities to command power among the local population. He is, however, never admitted to become a part of upper-class society, but is instead viewed by the rich as their useful tool. He is believed by Charles Gould and his own employers to be incorruptible, and it is for this reason that Nostromo is entrusted with removing the silver from Sulaco to keep it from the revolutionaries.

Accompanied by the young journalist Martin Decoud, Nostromo sets off to smuggle the silver out of Sulaco. However, the lighter on which the silver is being transported is struck at night in the waters off Sulaco by a transport carrying the invading revolutionary forces under the command of Colonel Sotillo. Nostromo and Decoud manage to save the silver by putting the lighter ashore on Great Isabel. Decoud and the silver are deposited on the deserted island of Great Isabel in the expansive bay off Sulaco, while Nostromo scuttles the lighter and manages to swim back to shore undetected. Back in Sulaco, Nostromo's power and fame continues to grow as he daringly rides over the mountains to summon the army which ultimately saves Sulaco's powerful leaders from the revolutionaries and ushers in the independent state of Sulaco.

In the meantime, left alone on the deserted island, Decoud eventually loses his mind. He takes the small lifeboat out to sea and there shoots himself, after first weighing his body down with some of the silver ingots so that he would sink into the sea. The novel putters along for some pages, sketching out the various characters that populate the novel - the Goulds, the crippled Dr Monygham, Giorgio Viola, his wife Teresa and their daughters Linda and Giselle, Don Jose Avellano, his daughter Antonia, her suitor Martin Decoud and of course Nostromo, the indefatigable and indomitable Capataz de Cagadores that all and sundry look to to save the day.

Apart from this diverse cast of characters, we also learn about the origins of the Gould Concession, political developments in Costaguana that threaten Sulaco's peaceful prosperity. And then in the last 50 pages of the book, it all comes to a head, twists aplenty, with Nostromo at the centre of it all. Honestly, the plot developments in the last 50 pages made me question whether the preceding pages or at least 70 percent of them were even necessary.

Probably one and a half stars for this book, which I think would have fared much better as a tightly written short story. Feb 13, Matt rated it it was amazing Shelves: classic-literature , best-of-the-best. Conrad is cynical, in the best sense of that word. Lord Jim was one of my favorite books, and Nostromo is probably even better. Although it is difficult to become acquainted with the characters at first, the reader cannot help but understand them in a profound way by the end.

Conrad's worldview is disturbing but also compelling, as he uses character, symbolism, and allegory to tell a realistic story with an abundance of lessons. View 1 comment. Sep 30, Czarny Pies rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Readers who are already deep into the Conrad catalogue. Recommended to Czarny by: Prof. Hughes put it on a modern novel course that I took.

Shelves: english-lit. Nostromo is a very fine book and a great pleasure to read. The first reason is that if you are interested in hearing the opinions of their favourite authors and in Nostromo certainly has a lot of things to say about very many topics. Unfortunatley, because of Nostromo's good qualities it often makes it way onto to undergraduate course lists where it does not belong. In order to air his Nostromo is a very fine book and a great pleasure to read.

In order to air his views on many of the great politic issues, Conrad invents a fictious country called Costaguana that bears no resemblance to any single Latin American country that ever existed. Conrad wants to express his thoughts on Garibaldi and his followers. For this reason he gives us an expatriate Italian patriarch who fought with Garibaldi. The problem with this is that at the time the largest Italian expatriated community in Latin was in Buenos Aires. There were essentially none in Panama although in other respects Costaguana is made to look like Panama.

Costaguana like Panama was extremely isolated from the capital and bitterly resented that the politicians in the capital were stonewalling the project of their region. Panama at the time simply did not have the level of culture that Costaguana does. What Conrad does very well in Nostromo is to make Europeans and North Americans reflect upon themselves as Imperial powers and upon the Imperial process.

Nostromo : a tale of the seaboard

However, his setting is an artificial construct with no more reality than one of the planets that Luke Skywalker visited. Nostromo is a good book but not terribly appropriate for undergraduate readers who could easily get mislead into thinking that Conrad was talking about a specific time, place and event. Virginia Woolf described Nostromo as "a difficult book to read through.

I generally find that introductory essays give away too many plot points, and this is no exception. But having read a little over half the novel without it, I was desperate for some help. It was not just me. Conrad really does jump all over the place in time, telling the story first from one angle then another. His characters really do play on a half-lighted stage where nobody is quite as they seem, apparent power may vanish in smoke, and some of the most significant events occur in the wings.

Early though this is , it marks a distinct break from the late Victorian novel, coming closer to Woolf or even to Faulkner. Its exotic setting, political theme, and moral concerns look forward to Hemingway and Greene, though without their directness of narrative.

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While I might have fallen into the rhythm of the narrative eventually, Edwards' essay helped me put the novel into a modernist context, so I could take the rapid shifts in viewpoint in my stride and not be fazed when Conrad does something extraordinary like jumping a decade into the speculative future. Conrad's own landfalls in South America as a Polish seaman aboard a British ship were brief, and apparently left little impression; he had to call upon others for help with the setting. All the same, it is amazingly well realized, with detail and atmosphere that convince me, even with my rather longer visits to those parts.

His invented country of Costaguana might be anywhere between Costa Rica and Guyana, as the introduction remarks. When yet another revolution breaks out in the country, the province, protected by its mountains, attempts to secede. You might think of Panama seceding from Colombia in , except that Conrad rearranges his geography to suit his story; this is not history under a pseudonym. It is an unstable country, with new regimes replacing each other more or less violently every few years. The name means "bosun" in Italian, but is also a contraction of "nostr'uomo," or "our man.

Conrad is not primarily a novelist of personal relationships; his characters tend to be seen as individuals reacting to the ethical or political situation around them, often in surprising ways.

Nostromo is not a denunciation of colonialism, as Heart of Darkness had been. Those battles are over; Costaguana has gained its independence. But not its stability, and most of the settlers who, like the Gould family, have been there for generations, are anything but settled. It is one of the earliest novels to explore the post-colonial age, and in some respects it goes even further than that. In the barely glimpsed but distantly present American industrialist Holroyd, who funds the mine from his stronghold in San Francisco as the first step towards establishing a North American foothold in the region and even promoting his particular brand of Christianity , we see distinct pre-echoes of the modern era of colonization by corporations and of politics as a kind of moral evangelism.

These are only a few of the topics that Edwards points out in his introduction; the reader will discover many more unaided. Nostromo is a difficult book, requiring intense concentration to read, but it provides much food for thought. Mar 27, Ivana rated it it was amazing. A masterpiece The funny thing is that for about a third of the novel, I had this strange feeling that there is something that was alluding me, something that I was not quite getting, like the story was for ever reason hard to follow and yet at the same time I felt immersed in the story and wanted to read more and more The characters seemed as real and as vivid as they possibly could had and still I felt a sense of distance, a fairy tale feeling.

As I made my way towards to end, I had a A masterpiece As I made my way towards to end, I had a feeling of sudden clearness Not that I wouldn't mind having a second look at it. A novel like this one should be read twice. I still have a feeling that I have missed something. I was and usually am immensely attracted to Conrad's prose, to his words, to his rhythm However, this time there was something in his writing that had reminded me of South American writers who favor magic realism but for the life of me I wouldn't be able to define what. It is not exactly the usual definition of it, there are no ghosts and no event that is impossible or hard to believe Nostromo, our men The ones to whom we are "the other"?


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In some ways everything and everyone in this story resolves about "our men". He is the personification of the people.. What a novel!

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Such a tale of pride, sadness and madness I'm not sure that I will ever read again. It felt as tragic as ancient plays, as beautifully sad to the core as the best of them. The only difference is that this novel hasn't dated Sadly, the tale of exploration, of lords and servants, of desperate fight in the name of "material interest" hasn't aged a day.

Sadly, one has to say, for it would be so lovely to be able to say "this sort of thing doesn't happens anymore. However, I guess that to fully understand the implications, you really have to read the novel. Or perhaps I'm just saying that to get you to read the novel Dec 18, Jim rated it it was amazing Shelves: 20th-century-lit , fiction. This is my third reading of this strange and remarkable book.

As I began re-reading the first half of the story, I felt disappointed -- as if my taste as the young student who first read this book had somehow traduced me.