The best selling classic Heart of Darkness tells of Charles Marlow, an Englishman who worked for a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa. Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver. However, his more urgent job is to return Kurtz, another ivory trader, to civilization, in a cover-up.

Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Nałęcz Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-born English novelist.