This book made me feel stupid.

I think it has something to do with the narrative framing, as a story Marlow was speaking aloud in-text, but while I would follow individual passages, I felt like I was losing track of the overall narrative. Overall, this was a much more difficult read than I anticipated for a novella that barely clears the 100 page mark.

However, there were some individual passages and reflections on life and human nature I found absolutely stunning. Conrad was clearly a master of the English language, and it shows here. His ability to build atmosphere is chilling. This is what bumped my rating up from 2 stars.

Finally, a note on the racism in this novel: the white characters are not meant to be sympathetic, at least from my reading, but I think it's fair to argue that the narrative is not critical enough to make that clear. Kurtz is a violent megalomaniac and Marlow a feckless opportunist (sometimes interpreted as a proxy for well-intentioned English colonialism, I think his own insensitivity and lack of sympathy for the enslaved Africans shines through), and they are both clearly agents of colonialism, but I do think the integrity of the story suffers severely because Conrad doesn't give us enough on part of the colonized. You can interpret this as a story showing the moral degradation caused by European colonialism and imperialism in Africa, but frankly I understand not taking that lesson away because the text is never so straight-forward about it.