Book Review: Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad (1904)

Paperback cover of the 2004 Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad, originally published in 1904. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor) 

Joseph Conrad’s 1904 novel Nostromo is long, dense, complicated, and brilliant. Set in the fictional South American republic of Costaguana, Nostromo follows a large cast of characters. Conrad masterfully shifts between many points of view in the novel, and it’s a stunning example of an artist working at the height of his powers. The frequent shifts in point of view and time make reading Nostromo a challenge, but the reader’s efforts are rewarded by Conrad’s beautiful prose and his insights into human nature. 

The Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Nostromo features an excellent introduction by Brent Hayes Edwards, who writes “Nostromo is not just a single novel, but a stunning orchestration of many novels at once.” (p.xiii) Hayes Edwards then goes on to list the many themes and plotlines of the novel.  

One of the main plotlines in Nostromo deals with the San Tome silver mine. Charles Gould, a Costaguanero of English heritage, has inherited the mine from his father. It has never turned much of a profit in the past, but Charles Gould is determined to change that. Gould succeeds, and the silver that the mine produces becomes central to the fate of many characters and to Costaguana itself. (Side note: my father’s cousin is named Charles Gould, a coincidence that I enjoyed. And I was constantly reminded of this as Conrad almost always calls the character “Charles Gould,” never “Charles” or “Gould.”)  

The novel begins with a detailed physical description of Costaguana, and although Conrad had only been to South America once during his sailing career, he was able to conjure up a thoroughly believable landscape. (Conrad went ashore during the voyage for just three and a half days.) The action of Nostromo occurs in the port town of Sulaco, which is a somewhat sleepy place as the novel opens.  

Conrad was an insightful political thinker. An American tycoon who invests in the San Tome mine has a jingoistic monologue in which he says, “We shall run the world’s business whether the world likes it or not.” (p.75) A prophetic statement to make in 1904.  

There are many beautiful passages in Nostromo. One of my favorite lines is in a letter that Martin Decoud writes to his sister: “All this is life, must be life, since it is so much like a dream.” (p.205)  

Several of my favorite lines in Nostromo are about the character Colonel Sotillo: “Like most of his countrymen, he was carried away by the sound of fine words, especially if uttered by himself.” (p.233) Conrad shows off his wit with this line: “Sotillo had spent the morning in battling with his thoughts; a contest to which he was unequal, from the vacuity of his mind and the violence of his passions.” (p.350) Now that’s a burn, Joseph Conrad style.  

Late in the novel, there’s a wonderful line about Emilia Gould: “It had come into her mind that for life to be large and full, it must contain the care of the past and of the future in every passing moment of the present.” (p.410) 

Class and status play important roles in the novel, and Nostromo, who is unable to hold onto money, has a great line: “It seems to me that everything is permitted to the rich.” (p.347)  

Nostromo is a novel about outsiders. Charles Gould is born in Costaguana, but he comes from an English family, and he was educated in England. His wife, Emilia, is also British, as is Captain Mitchell. Nostromo and the Viola family are Italian. Martin Decoud has spent much of his life in France. And much of the elite of Sulaco is of Spanish descent. The fascinating mix of ethnicities in South America was a perfect subject for a novelist like Conrad, who traveled around the world as a sailor. Conrad’s own life found him living in many different cultures. Conrad was born in the city of Berdychiv, which had been part of Poland, was in the Russian Empire when Conrad was born in 1857 and is now in Ukraine. Conrad’s heritage was Polish, he moved to France to begin his career at sea. He eventually moved to England, and wrote his novels in English, his third language.  

It wouldn’t be a Joseph Conrad novel without some time spent on the water, and one of the most dramatic parts of the novel is when Nostromo and Martin Decoud are tasked with sailing a lighter (small barge) full of silver out of the Placid Gulf that surrounds Sulaco, in the hopes of keeping it away from the military, who have overthrown the president of Costaguana.  

Nostromo has a bad premonition about transporting the silver from the beginning, and it’s certainly not an envious job. Conrad builds the tension with a night so dark that nothing can be seen. Catastrophe occurs when the lighter is struck by the ship bringing the soldiers to occupy Sulaco. Knowing the lighter is slowly sinking, Nostromo and Decoud bury the silver on one of the small islands in the gulf. Decoud stays on the island with a small rowboat, while Nostromo deliberately sinks the lighter and swims back to shore.  

The passages describing Decoud’s time on the island are beautiful and sad: “Solitude from mere outward condition of existence becomes very swiftly a state of soul in which the affectations of irony and skepticism have no place...In our activity alone do we find the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as against the whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless part.” (p.393)  

One of the many admirers of Nostromo was F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote in a 1923 article that Nostromo was “the great novel of the past fifty years.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald on Authorship, p.86) High praise indeed.  

Silver tarnishes when it comes into contact with sulfur, and the silver of the San Tome mine tarnishes everyone in the novel who comes into contact with it. Perhaps that is the lesson of Nostromo.