An Outcast of the Islands

Published in 1896, this Conrad novel returns to the Borneo river world of Almayer's Folly at an earlier time. Peter Willems, a clerk dismissed for theft from a Macassar firm, is given a second chance by the trader Tom Lingard and posted upriver, where he becomes obsessed with Aissa, a woman of the local Malay-Arab circle, and betrays Lingard's secret channel to the rival Abdulla. Almayer is already on the river, watching his own fortunes fail. The novel is a study of a weak man destroyed by desire, isolation, and the politics of colonial trade on a river he cannot command.

Bound in dark blue cloth blocked with a silver design. Blue slipcase with Conrad's signature in silver on front.