Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Originally published in 1904 as a two-volume serial, "Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard" is an epic adventure novel written by Polish-British author Joseph Conrad. Set in the fictional South American country of Costaguana during a violent revolution, the story concerns an Italian longshoreman named Nostromo (roughly translating from the Italian to mean 'Our Man'), who becomes entrusted to safeguard a priceless silver mine owned by an Englishman named Charles Gould, aka The King of Sulaco. Nostromo accepts the challenge as means of heightening his profile, but when he fails to reap the rich benefits he was promised, he becomes resentfully outraged and greedily corrupt. This work is an illustration of the impact of foreign exploitation on a developing nation. In 1998, "Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard" was ranked 47th on the list of the 100 Greatest English-language Novels of the 20th Century by the Modern Library. It is hailed as one of Conrad’s finest pieces of long-fiction. F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted of the book, “I’d have rather written Nostromo than any other novel.”