- Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks; Reissue edition (28 April 1983)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0192816195
- ISBN-13: 978-0192816191
- Product Dimensions: 18.4 x 11.6 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,583,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Under Western Eyes (Penguin Classics)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Under Western Eyes traces a sequence or error, guilt, and expiation. Its composition placed such demands upon Conrad that he suffered a serious breakdown upon its completion. It is by common critical consent one of his finest achievements. Bomb-throwing assassins, political repression and revolt, emigre revolutionaries infiltrated by a government spy: much of Under Western Eyes (1911) is more topical than we might wish. Set in tsarist Russia and in Geneva, its concern with perennial issues of human responsibility gives it a lasting moral force. The contradictory demands placed upon men and women by the social and political convulsions of the modern age have never been more revealingly depicted. Joseph Conrad personally felt no sympathy with either Russians or revolutionaries. None the less his portrayal of both in Under Western Eyes is dispassionate and disinterested. Through the Western eyes of his narrator we are given a sombre but not entirely pessimistic view of the human dilemmas which are born of oppression and violence.
About the Author
Joseph Conrad was a Polish novelist who lived most of his life in Britain and didn't learn English until age 21. The young Conrad lived an adventurous life involving gunrunning and political conspiracy, and apparently had a disastrous love affair that plunged him into despair. He served 16 years in the merchant navy.In 1894, at age 36, Conrad reluctantly gave up the sea, partly because of poor health and partly because he had decided on a literary career.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Influenced by Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment", also a gripping pyschological study of an aloof, "guilty" man, but with a new twist: this is a searing indictment of cynical Russian autocracy (so timeless!) - and of police states in general. And it also vividly illustrates Conrad's famous (and wise) scepticism about the effectiveness of violent revolutionary action. The hero Mr Razumov, and his associates, are oppressed human victims of these two great opposing forces. This is one of Conrad's very best works - better I think than "The Secret Agent" - and is also one of the best (and politically phrophetic) novels of the early 20th century.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Apart from being a gripping story, Under Western Eyes is one of best portrayals of the turn-of-the-century Russian mind that you will come across. Some of the characters, notably Razumov and the main exiled revolutionaries, could come straight out of Dostoyevsky. The dialogue is abstract, halting and slightly sinister, mixing intolerance, fear and semi-hysteria. Crucial to the atmospherics is the depiction of Geneva as a dull, smug, ugly city where freedom is taken for granted in a way that sets it a world apart from Russia. It may not quite be as good as Nostromo or Heart of Darkness, but it is well up there as one of the early 20th century's great novels.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I strongly recomend this book especially for people who have not read Conrad before: it is the easiest Conrad book to "get into" because the plot begins straight away and is imediately interesting. Through no fault or his own, through another person's misunderstanding the main character finds himself involved in a situation which changes his life and where he has to act in the face of moral dilemnas.There is no other writer like Conrad: the continual depths conveyed in all his books I have not encounted before in this way. This particular book is different from his others in subject matter - I have heard it said that it is more intellectual; you could say perhaps that it's subject is more intellectual and you would not be wrong. Still it is easy to read and compelling. I wish there were more writers like Joseph Conrad.
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