HeartofDarkness is an 1899 novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad, in which sailor Charles Marlow tells the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior. The best study guide to HeartofDarkness on the planet, from the creators of SparkNotes. Get the summaries, analysis, and quotes you need. HeartofDarkness, novella by Joseph Conrad that was first published in 1899 in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and then in Conrad’s Youth: and Two Other Stories (1902). The novella begins with a group of passengers aboard a boat floating on the River Thames. One of them, Charlie Marlow, relates to his fellow seafarers an experience of his that took place on another river altogether—the Congo River in Africa. Marlow’s story begins in what he calls the “sepulchral city,” somewhere in Europe. There “the Company”—an unnamed organization running a colonial enterprise in the Belgian Congo—appoints him captain of a river steamer. He sets out for Africa optimistic of what he will find.But his expectations are quickly soured. From the moment he arrives, he is exposed to the evil of imperialism, witnessing the violence it inflicts upon the African people it exploits. As he proceeds, he begins to hear tell of a man named Kurtz—a colonial agent who is supposedly unmatched in his ability to procure ivory from the continent’s interior. Kurtz has taken command over a tribe of natives who he now employs to conduct raids on the surrounding regions. The man is clearly ill, physically and psychologically. The horror!” he tells Marlow before dying. Marlow almost dies as well, but he makes it back to the sepulchral city to recuperate.