According to Wikipedia: "Heart of Darkness (1899), by Joseph Conrad, is a short novel, presented as a frame narrative, about Charles Marlow's job as an ivory transporter down the Congo River. In the course of his commercial-agent work in the Congo Free State (1885–1908), the seaman Marlow becomes very interested in and investigates Mr Kurtz, an ivory-procurement agent, a man of established notoriety among the native Africans and the European colonials. The story is a thematic exploration of thesavagery-versus-civilization relationship, and of the colonialism and the racism that make imperialism possible. Originally published as a three-part serial story, in 'Blackwood's Magazine', the novella Heart of Darkness has been variously published and translated into many languages. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness as the sixty-seventh top-novel of the hundred-best-novels in English of the twentieth century; and is included to the Western canon."