Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Polish-born writer Joseph Conrad (born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski).

Before its 1902 publication, it appeared as a three-part series (1899) in Blackwood's Magazine.

It is widely regarded as a significant work of English literature and part of the Western canon.This highly symbolic story is actually a story within a story, or frame narrative.

It follows Marlow as he recounts, from dusk through to late night, his adventure into the Congo to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary.The story details an incident when Marlow, an Englishman, took a foreign assignment as a ferry-boat captain, employed by a Belgian trading company.

Although the river is never specifically named, readers may assume it is the Congo River, in the Congo Free State, a private colony of King Leopold II.

Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver; however, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz, another ivory trader, to civilization in a cover up.

Kurtz has a reputation throughout the region.