A Petersburg student betrays a revolutionary to the police, is sent by them to Geneva to spy on the exiles, and finds the dead man's sister waiting there. Conrad's father died in Russian exile and he loathed the whole subject; he had a breakdown finishing this book, and it is the most controlled thing he wrote — a study of the informer as the century's representative man.
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), van oorsprong Pools, schreef in het Engels. Naast 'Hart der duisternis' zijn 'Lord Jim', 'Nostromo' en 'De geheim agent' zijn bekendste werken. 'Hart der duisternis' vormde de basis voor de film 'Apocalypse Now' van Francis Ford Coppola.