Set in the 1870s, this tale concerns the love of an English sea captain for the Spanish beauty Dona Rita. He carries Carlist munitions to Peninsular ports, she finances the project.
Conrad recounts all the adventures of gun-running and the ever-threatening sea, but never loses his theme, the beautiful and transitory nature of love.
Conrad treasured this story, and explained it as a fragment from his "buried youth."
The Arrow of Gold is Joseph Conrad's most romantic novel, literally a cloak-and-dagger tale set in the French port of Marseilles and the adjacent "sea of classic adventures." The principal characters are Monsieur George, a young sailor ready for love and adventure, and Doña Rita, a young woman of extraordinary wealth and beauty haunted by a mysterious threat. Supporters of a gallant but hopeless cause draw M. George into their dangerous gunrunning schemes by using Doña Rita as bait. The suspenseful story is told many years after the events in the form of a long letter from the seaman to a childhood friend. In Conrad's classic fashion, the "Two Notes" of the subtitle frame the story with multiple and clashing perspectives.
Description:
Set in the 1870s, this tale concerns the love of an English sea captain for the Spanish beauty Dona Rita. He carries Carlist munitions to Peninsular ports, she finances the project.
Conrad recounts all the adventures of gun-running and the ever-threatening sea, but never loses his theme, the beautiful and transitory nature of love.
Conrad treasured this story, and explained it as a fragment from his "buried youth."
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The Arrow of Gold is Joseph Conrad's most romantic novel, literally a cloak-and-dagger tale set in the French port of Marseilles and the adjacent "sea of classic adventures." The principal characters are Monsieur George, a young sailor ready for love and adventure, and Doña Rita, a young woman of extraordinary wealth and beauty haunted by a mysterious threat. Supporters of a gallant but hopeless cause draw M. George into their dangerous gunrunning schemes by using Doña Rita as bait. The suspenseful story is told many years after the events in the form of a long letter from the seaman to a childhood friend. In Conrad's classic fashion, the "Two Notes" of the subtitle frame the story with multiple and clashing perspectives.