The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World

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About The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad In A Global World

Product Description “Enlightening, compassionate, superb” —John Le CarréWinner of the  2018 Cundill History PrizeA New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017One of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2017A visionary exploration of the life and times of Joseph Conrad, his turbulent age of globalization and our own, from one of the most exciting young historians writing today Migration, terrorism, the tensions between global capitalism and nationalism, and a communications revolution: these forces shaped Joseph Conrad’s destiny at the dawn of the twentieth century. In this brilliant new interpretation of one of the great voices in modern literature, Maya Jasanoff reveals Conrad as a prophet of globalization. As an immigrant from Poland to England, and in travels from Malaya to Congo to the Caribbean, Conrad navigated an interconnected world, and captured it in a literary oeuvre of extraordinary depth. His life story delivers a history of globalization from the inside out, and reflects powerfully on the aspirations and challenges of the modern world.   Joseph Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857, to Polish parents in the Russian Empire. At sixteen he left the landlocked heart of Europe to become a sailor, and for the next twenty years travelled the world’s oceans before settling permanently in England as an author. He saw the surging, competitive "new imperialism" that planted a flag in almost every populated part of the globe. He got a close look, too, at the places “beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat lines,” and the hypocrisy of the west’s most cherished ideals.   In a compelling blend of history, biography, and travelogue, Maya Jasanoff follows Conrad’s routes and the stories of his four greatest works— The Secret Agent,  Lord Jim,  Heart of Darkness, and  Nostromo. Genre-bending, intellectually thrilling, and deeply humane,  The Dawn Watch embarks on a spell-binding expedition into the dark heart of Conrad’s world—and through it to our own. Review “ The Dawn Watch is the most vivid and suggestive biography of Conrad ever written...[a] beautifully written book.” —  The Wall Street Journal  “Enlightening, compassionate, superb”  —John Le Carré “Gracefully written . . . the book is a great pleasure to read, for Jasanoff is driven to understand the world that shaped a writer she loves.” —  Adam Hochschild, Foreign Affairs “Fascinating…[Conrad’s] art, which he defined as the capacity to make readers hear, feel and see, as able to capture the contradictions within empires and the resistance to them. This is the Conrad who comes alive in Jasanoff’s masterful study.  The Dawn Watch will become a creative companion to all students of his work. It has made me want to re-establish connections with the Conrad whose written sentences once inspired in me the same joy as a musical phrase.” —Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The New York Times Book Review  “Terrific…Weaving together biography, history, literature and her own travels, this fascinating, beautifully written work takes one of those literary giants frequently written off these days as a dead white male and reveals how he inhabited and grappled with a world startlingly like our own…[Jasanoff] explains why it’s important that we grapple with figures like Conrad even if we don’t share their values. History is like therapy for the present, she writes. It makes us talk about its parents. She’s right as well as witty. And reading The Dawn Watch, we see how we are in many ways Conrad’s children. Even if you hated ‘Lord Jim’ in high school, this book will make you want to pick it up again.” — John Powers, NPR “Brilliant…Jasanoff is an insightful and imaginative historian…The book comes in the form of a biography of Joseph Conrad, but in fact through Conrad she tells the story of a whole phase in world history…Boundless curiosity is also an attribute of Maya Jasanoff...[Her] travels have given her an empathy and an understanding for Conrad, and al