The Negro from Narcissus (1897) is Joseph Conrad's most maritime and naval novel. Here you can look into almost all parts of the ship: from the sailor's cabin and the captain's cabin to the highest sails and rafts on each mast. At the same time, Negro is a novel about man and about social transformations that accelerated at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. James Waite, the black sailor on Narcissus and the protagonist of this work, is just an axis around which events on the ship are dangerously twisted. Tales of Anxiety (1898) is a rather heterogeneous collection of short stories. Here you can see: "Karain" - a Malay story, where the leader of the tribe tells the story of his youth; "Idiots" - a short story about a woman's attempt to protect herself from her husband's sexual harassment; "Outpost of Progress" is a story in which Conrad first came to a direct critique of Belgian and possibly European colonialism; "Return" - Conrad's first and only attempt to write a "normal" story about his contemporaries; and "Lagoon" - somewhat similar to "Karaina" Malay story. The leitmotif of the collection is betrayal, flight and refusal to perform duties. Because of this, critics in the generally acclaimed reviews of the collection have repeatedly pointed to its excessive gloom, but this did not prevent Conrad from receiving an award from the weekly "Academy" for "Stories" and "Youth". "Youth" (1898) is an autobiographical story about how a young officer on a ship in a rather strange way becomes a captain. Charlie Marlowe is the first to appear in this story.
