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The Dawn Watch

Joseph Conrad in a Global World

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About this listen

 CUNDILL PRIZE 2018 WINNER SHORTLISTED FOR THE JAMES TAIT BLACK BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2018

‘Enlightening, compassionate, superb’ John le Carré

A visionary life and times of Joseph Conrad, and of our global world, from one of the best historians writing today.

Migration, terrorism, the tensions between global capitalism and nationalism, the promise and peril of a technological and communications revolution: these forces shaped the life and work of Joseph Conrad at the dawn of the twentieth century. In this brilliant new interpretation of one of the great voices in modern literature, Maya Jasanoff reveals Conrad as a prophet of globalization as we recognize it today. As an immigrant from Poland to England, and in travels from Malaysia to the Congo to the Caribbean, Conrad navigated an interconnected world, and captured it in a literary oeuvre of extraordinary depth. His life story delivers a history of globalization from the inside out, and reflects powerfully on the aspirations and challenges of the modern world.

Joseph Conrad was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857, to Polish parents in the Russian Empire. At sixteen he left the landlocked heart of Europe to become a sailor, and for the next twenty years travelled the world’s oceans before settling permanently in London as an author. He saw the surging, competitive ‘new imperialism’ that planted a flag in almost every populated part of the globe. He got a close look, too, at the places ‘beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat lines,’ and the hypocrisy of the west’s most cherished ideals.

In a compelling blend of history, biography and travelogue, Maya Jasanoff follows Conrad’s routes and the stories of his four greatest works: The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo. Genre-bending, intellectually thrilling and deeply humane, The Dawn Watch embarks on a spellbinding expedition into the dark heart of Conrad’s world – and through it to our own.

 Adventurers, Explorers & Survival Africa Colonialism & Post-Colonialism Europe Politics & Government World Imperialism England Colonial Period Military Socialism Social justice Latin American British Empire Capitalism

Critic reviews

‘The Dawn Watch will win prizes, and if it doesn't there is something wrong with the prizes’ Guardian

‘A strikingly original book … Jasanoff writes beautifully … succeeds brilliantly … an extraordinary and profoundly ambitious book, little short of a masterpiece’ William Dalrymple

‘Lucid, revelatory and wonderfully concise, The Dawn Watch celebrates Conrad’s uncanny prescience and shows his continued relevance now in the twenty-first century’, Book of the Year, TLS, William Boyd

‘A startlingly original take of the state we’re in’ Book of the Year, TLS, Frances Wilson

'An enviably gifted writer … her historian's eye can untie knots that might baffle the pure critic … Jasanoff … steers us securely and stylishly through those latitudes where Conrad witnessed the future scupper the past' Spectator

'So well written … This is a biographer who has done her homework and her legwork for a book that creates a Conrad for our time. Enjoy it – how rarely can one say that about a work of scholarship' The Times

‘Written with a novelist's flair for vivid detail and a scholar's attention to texts The Dawn Watch is by any standard a major contribution to our understanding of Conrad in his time … what Jasanoff offers the reader is … a fresh view of a much-scribbled-on-writer that enables us to see him in a time in many ways like our own’ Literary Review

‘Skillfully integrates details of Conrad's life and accounts of his four greatest works, linking the challenges and forces that lie behind and within the novels to those of the 21st century … A powerful encouragement to read his books’ Economist

‘An unobtrusively skillful, subtle, clear-eyed book, beautifully narrated … It is Jasanoff's warmth towards her subject that comes through’ Financial Times

‘Jasanoff’s first-rate analysis of the “global compass” of Conrad’s fiction, in all its matchless beauty and grave intent’ Evening Standard

‘Maya Jasanoff's stands out for its vivid and imaginative writing’ Sunday Times
All stars
Most relevant
I've long been 'aware' of Joseph Conrad, mostly because of my interest in our nautical past. I wasn't aware of the extent of his mission to try to issue some kind of warning about the way the world was shaping up.

This biography is written very much in the context of very recent events such as the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump.

A bit 'specialised' but extremely interesting

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Memorable in every aspect. More than a biography. Greatly informative on the historical context of his time. Very timely reflections on the flux of European relations; seen from 21 century but not veering into punditry.

Superb

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Amazing historical and literary scholarship. With regard to the audio, the Polish pronunciation could have been better.

Amazing book!

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A very good companion to Conrad. Jasanoff has skill in writing; and is able to carry you with her through the trials and tribulations of Conrads life.

Very Good

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I began Conrad with Lord Jim in my 20s, was transfixed by the intimacy he created between myself and Jim- became mesmerised by Victory - re-reading in a fog - amazed at how he could plunge the reader so completely into such mysterious and sinister apprehensions of human savagery - so that at the same moment you are desperate to get back to your own life and yet are drawn onto the ships and into the jungles of his characters - then Nostromo became the ultimate novel - until finally I read Heart of Darkness - already knowing Apocalypse Now and sort of decided I wouldn’t ever need to read any other writer. Of course I have but aged 58 I have just finished Outcast of the Islands - a great Audible - and found so much humour in it that I hadn’t found on the page myself. It’s a wonderful set of characters.
Maya Jasanoff’s study is for me a wonderful insight and gift. There’s nothing academically reductionist in her work. Its the opposite. A review can be so misleading. Her work is expansive and illuminating. She brings us the great works - as he saw them unfold on his desk - and how the world read them - and how the world can read them now. What more can you ask of an author than this fabulous exploration. Had he known that a book like this would one day be written Conrad would have spent his last years a little less anxiously. You get the sense he didn’t enjoy his older years. That he didn’t feel he had given clarity to his ideas. That he suffered too much for his art. Jasanoff manages to capture that too. I finished the book quite pitying him and wanting to visit his grave to whisper some reassurances to him that it was all still here, very much intact.
Thank you MJ.

Superb

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