The Arrow of Gold: A Story Between Two Notes

✍ Scribed by Joseph Conrad

• Publisher: Doubleday;Pine Street, University Presses Marketing
• Year: 1919;2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 187 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 081221885X

✦ Synopsis

Review

"One of the big love stories of the world of books."—_Publishers Weekly_

"The magical quality of the narrative, the fastidious and unerring distinction of the style, are Conrad at his best."—_Spectator_

"Doña Rita is only the central figure, not the sole notable figure, in a wonderful group, whose collective impression is that of some splendid, barbaric, yet most delicately and finely wrought example of the jeweler's art."—_New York Times_

Product Description

Reflecting Conrad's genius for narrative that focuses on the quest for inner truths, The Arrow of Gold is an exploration of the dangerous appetites of men and of human vulnerability, as well as a profound meditation on the emotional boundary between people. Boasting a cast of extraordinary and eccentric personalities, including the heroine Doña Rita, this is a story of adventure on the high seas, of the revelation of love, of the crushing weight of loss, and of freedom found in the recklessness of unadorned sincerity.

During the Carlist war of the early 1870s, a young sailor, the unnamed protagonist, joins the champions of Don Carlos de Bourbon, pretender to the throne of Spain. The Carlists use the eager youth's intense attraction to the sea to persuade him to run perilous enterprises for their cause, ventures he later learns have been financed by the beautiful mistress and heiress of a rich man's fortune. When he falls in love with her, he finds himself moved absolutely by this discovery, despite the fact that she is unable to return his love fully. In the end he is left alone with his first love, the sea, his brief time with the mysterious Doña Rita marking a tumultuous awakening to a life of passion, the desolation that hides in its shadow, and the possibility of rebirth in its wake.

Although not as well known as his earlier novels Lord Jim and Nostromo, The Arrow of Gold was critically acclaimed when it first appeared in 1919 and is still considered to be among the best of Conrad's later works.