Kirjahaku

The life of J zef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski reads like an adventure story, an adventure story that could be written by somebody like Joseph Conrad. The young Conrad dreamed of a life at sea, he eventually became a British merchant seaman and he spent fifteen years sailing on the classic three-masted, square-rigged sailing clippers before they were ultimately replaced by steamships. During this period he worked his way up from apprentice, to third mate, to second mate, to first mate and finally the captain of one of these beautiful ships.Joseph Conrad once said that everything about his life can be found in his books. Because the material for his first books are mainly autobiographical then Ian Burnet has been able to use a mixture of his own words, together with those of Conrad, to tell this story of Joseph Conrad's eastern voyages and his tales of Singapore and an East Borneo River.Conrad loved the 'mysterious East' and his first books - Almayers Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, Lord Jim and The Rescue were all set in Borneo and based on the people and places he encountered in his own voyages as first mate on a trading vessel based out of Singapore. In the latter part of this book Ian Burnet has taken the liberty to place the parts of these first novels into their proper narrative sequence and focus on the back-story of his characters, which will make it easier for readers to discover or rediscover Conrad's genius.Large Format, 164 Pages, 42 Images

The Tasman Map is an icon of early Dutch cartography and shows the first European discoveries of Australia. Based on sixteen separate discoveries, the first map of Australia took shape over a period of only forty years, from 1606 to 1644. It shows a recognisable outline of the north, west, and south coasts of Australia that was not to change for another 125 years until the arrival of the British explorer James Cook. The version of the map held by the Mitchell Library in Sydney, Australia, is hand-drawn on delicate Japanese paper and is thought to have been specially prepared for presentation to the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company. Every visitor who passes through the vestibule of the Mitchell Library stops to admire the magnificent marble mosaic of the Tasman Map, which fills the entire vestibule floor and shows Abel Tasman's voyages of exploration around Australia in 1642/43 and 1644.

The life of Józef 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 life’s work is set in Southeast Asia. Conrad’s favourite destination was the vibrant, bustling port of Singapore as well as the remote ports of the Dutch East Indies, and his early works – Almayer’s 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 Conrad’s Eastern Voyages, Ian Burnet places Conrad’s Malay novels into their proper narrative sequence and explores the backstory of his characters helping the reader to visualise the cultural and historical context of Conrad’s time in late 19th-century Southeast Asia.