I read Heart Of Darkness recently, really enjoyed it - had to laugh out loud at one point, though, where a very serious and portentous paragraph ended with speculation as to whether there would be "fisticuffs". Couldn't help comparing it to Apocalypse Now as I read it. Re. the "Is he an Orientalist (or 'Africanist') or is he documenting others' Orientalism?" debate, I found there's a strange kind of tension in Conrad's politics in the book because while I think it's pretty clear that he does regard the Africans in the story as basically savages, somewhere intermediate in development between animals and 'proper' humans, he is obviously also very uncomfortable with their exploitation and maltreatment by the European colonialists.
There's another couple of short-ish stories in the volume I bought, which I plan to read at some point.
