Heart of Darkness (Unabridged‪)‬

An 1899 novella written by Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness tells of Charles Marlow, an Englishman who took a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa. Although Conrad does not give the name of the river, at the time, Congo Free State, the location of the large and important Congo River, was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II.

Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver. However, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz, another ivory trader, who has been rumored ill, to his homeland, in a cover-up. Kurtz has a reputation throughout the region. But Kurtz dies while being carried to civilization aboard a ship. Marlow later returns to his home city and is confronted by many people seeking things and ideas of Kurtz. Marlow eventually sees Kurtz's fiancée about a year later; she is still in mourning. She asks Marlow about Kurtz's death and Marlow informs her that his last words were her name - rather than, as really happened, "The horror! The horror!"