On August 19th 1886, Joseph Conrad , born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Poland, became a British citizen.

Conrad's father had been a Polish poet and patriot. He was arrested in 1861 for his political activism and exiled to northern Russia where he was joined by his wife and young son. Both his mother and father died of tuberculosis when Joseph was about 12 and he was raised by his uncle, until he set out at the age of 17 for Marseilles, France, to join the merchant navy. His many harrowing adventures at sea were to set the scene for much of his work.

In 1878, when Conrad was 21, he travelled to England as a deck-hand on a British freighter. He learned English during six voyages on a small British trade boat and spent 16 years with the British merchant navy. He had numerous adventures around the world and got his first command in 1888. The following year, he captained a Congo River steamboat for four months, which was to be the inspiration for his well-known story Heart of Darkness.

Classical actor and James Bond villain Toby Stephens brings his brooding intensity to this terrifying and exhilarating exploration of evil that served as the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola’s movie Apocalypse Now. Silksoundbook's unabridged audio book Heart of Darkness follows Conrad’s iconic characters, Marlow and Kurtz, on a journey to the very depths of human nature.