基本信息出版社：Bantam Classics
页码：271 页
出版日期：1981年02月
ISBN：055321361X/9780553213614
条形码：9780553213614
装帧：简装
丛书名：Bantam Classics
外文书名：吉姆老爷

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This immortal novel of the sea tells the story of a British sailor haunted by a single youthful act of cowardly betrayal. To the white men in Bombay, Calcutta, and Rangoon, Jim is a man of mystery. To the primitive natives deep in the Malayan jungle, he is a god gifted with supernatural powers. To the beautiful half-caste girl who flees to his hut for protection, he is a lord to be feared and loved.

Lord Jim—Conrad’s classic portrait of a man’s guilt, his search for forgiveness, and his final, tragic redemption—is a work of enduring value and one of the world’s great masterpieces.
作者简介 Joseph Conrad, christened Josef Teodor Konrad, Nalecz Korzeniowski, was born on December 3, 1857, in a part of Russia that had once belonged to Poland. His parents were members of the landed gentry, but as ardent Polish patriots, the suffered considerably for their political views. Orphaned at eleven, Conrad attended school for a few years in Cracow, He soon concluded, however, that there was no future for a Pole in occupied Poland, and at sixteen he left his ancestral home forever.

The sea was Conrad's love and career for the next twenty years. In the French merchant marine, he sailed to the West. Indies, smuggled guns to Spanish rebels, ran into debt, and bungled a suicide attempt Then in the British merchant navy, he rose to first mate and finally to captain, sailing to Australia and Borneo and surviving at least one shipwreck. In 1890 he contracted to become captain of a Congo River steamer, but the six months he spent in Africa led only to disillusionment and ill health; this episode would become the basis for Conrad's masterpiece, Heart of Darkness. Reluctantly leaving the merchant service, he settled in England and completed his first novel, Almayer's Folly, already begun at sea.

Hi subsequent works, many of which drew upon his sea experiences, include The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897), Lord Jim (1900), Heart of Darkness (1902), Youth (1902) Typhoon (1903), Nastromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), The Secret Sharer (1910), Under the Western Eyes (1911), and Chance (1913). The man who was twenty-one years old before he spoke a word of English is now regarded as one of the superb English stylists of all time. Conrad died almost literally on his desk in 1924, at the age of sixty-six.
媒体推荐 书评
Amazon.com
When Lord Jim first appeared in 1900, many took Joseph Conrad to task for couching an entire novel in the form of an extended conversation--a ripping good yarn, if you like. (One critic in The Academy complained that the narrator "was telling that after-dinner story to his companions for eleven solid hours.") Conrad defended his method, insisting that people really do talk for that long, and listen as well. In fact his chatty masterwork requires no defense--it offers up not only linguistic pleasures but a timeless exploration of morality.

The eponymous Jim is a young, good-looking, genial, and naive water-clerk on the Patna, a cargo ship plying Asian waters. He is, we are told, "the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck." He also harbors romantic fantasies of adventure and heroism--which are promptly scuttled one night when the ship collides with an obstacle and begins to sink. Acting on impulse, Jim jumps overboard and lands in a lifeboat, which happens to be bearing the unscrupulous captain and his cohorts away from the disaster. The Patna, however, manages to stay afloat. The foundering vessel is towed into port--and since the officers have strategically vanished, Jim is left to stand trial for abandoning the ship and its 800 passengers.

Stripped of his seaman''s license, convinced of his own cowardice, Jim sets out on a tragic and transcendent search for redemption. This may sound like the bleakest of narratives. But Lord Jim is also touching, elevating, and often funny. Here, for example, the narrator describes the ship''s captain (proving that clothes do indeed make the man):

He made me think of a trained baby elephant walking on hind-legs. He was extravagantly gorgeous too--got up in a soiled sleeping suit, bright green and deep orange vertical stripes, with a pair of ragged straw slippers on his bare feet, and somebody''s cast-off pith hat, very dirty and two sizes too small for him, tied up with a manilla rope-yarn on the top of his big head. You understand a man like that hasn''t a ghost of a chance when it comes to borrowing clothes.

This is formidable prose by any standard. But when you consider that Conrad was working in his third language, the sublime after-dinner story that is Lord Jim seems even more astonishing an accomplishment. --Teri Kieffer --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

The New York Times Book Review
A book of the rare literary quality ofLord Jim is something to receive with gratitude and joy, and with a sense of a distinction conferred upon the readers of romance. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From AudioFile
Conrad''s haunting story of adventure turned tragedy portrays a young man''s struggle against his own weaknesses. Because of its complex characters, shifting settings and roving points of view, Lord Jim needs an attentive and insightful narrator. Nigel Graham is just such a performer. Keeping a cool, steady tone, Graham captures the excitement and terror of the story. Listeners are lead in and out of grueling psychological sketches which run side by side with scenes of intense characterizations and action. Graham handles all with expertise. Vocal characterizations and accents are present but not overwhelming; the narrator ensures the story''s continuity. J.S.G. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Laurence Davies, Dartmouth College
Is there room for yet another Lord Jim? The answer is emphatically yes. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Allan Simmons, General Editor of The Conradian
Professor Watts''s assiduity and thoroughness make this edition of Lord Jim a delight... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.