Der Nigger von der "Narcissus" (Lore Krüger translation) Add a review

The Nigger of the "Narcissus": A Tale of the Forecastle (sometimes subtitled A Tale of the Sea) is an 1897 novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad. The central character is an Afro-Caribbean man who is ill at sea while aboard the trading ship Narcissus heading towards London. Due to the offensiveness of the word nigger in the title, it was renamed The Children of the Sea: A Tale of the Forecastle for the 1897 US edition. The novella dignifies the men in the forecastle and "explores voices at the margin of society".

Some critics have described the novella as marking the start of Conrad's major or middle period; others have placed it as the best work of his early period. In a letter, Conrad classifies the novella to be “the story by which, as creative artist, I stand or fall, and which, at any rate, no one else could have written. A landmark in literature, I can safely say, for nothing like it has been ever done before”.