The life of Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski reads like an adventure story, an adventure story written by somebody like Joseph Conrad. The young Conrad dreamed of a life at sea and eventually became a British merchant seaman, working his way up from apprentice to captain on classic three-masted square-rigged barques. He would also become one of the most important novelists in the English language, and almost half of his lifes work is set in Southeast Asia. Conrads favorite destination was the vibrant, bustling port of Singapore as well as the remote ports of the Dutch East Indies, and his early works - Almayers Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, Lord Jim and The Rescue - are based on the people and places he encountered in his own voyages on the Vidar, a trading vessel that plied the waters of the Indonesian archipelago from its base in Singapore. In Joseph Conrads Eastern Voyages, Ian Burnet places Conrads Malay novels into their proper narrative sequence and explores the backstory of his characters helping the reader to visualize the cultural and historical context of Conrads time in late 19th-century Southeast Asia.
