Almayer's Folly. By Joseph Conrad. (T. Fisher Unwin.)— This is
a decidedly powerful story of an uncommon type, and breaks fresh ground in fiction. Almayer, a Dutchman, tries his fortune in Macassar among Englishmen, who are mostly ad- venturers of a rather low type, and some of whom are little better than pirates. He marries a Malay, and otherwise his prosperity does not come up to his dreams as a young man. He tries, however, to save Nina from sinking back into Malaydom. How he fails, how Nina's blood asserts itself, and how she leaves him to live her own life with her native lover, this story tells. It is extremely powerful all through, though the plot is not so well compacted as it might have been. All the leading characters in the book—Almayer, his wife, his daughter, and Dain, the daughter's native lover—are well drawn, and the parting between father and daughter has a pathetic naturalness about it, unspoiled by straining after effect. There are, too,, some admirably graphic passages in the book. The approach of a monsoon is most effectively described :—" Round her all was as yet stillness and peace, but she could hear afar off the roar of the wind, the hiss of heavy rain, the wash of the waves on the tor- mented river. It came nearer and nearer, with loud thunder- claps and long flashes of vivid lightning, followed by short periods of appalling blackness. Whzia the storm reached the low point dividing the river, the house shook in the wind, and the rain pattered loudly on the palm-leaf roof, the thunder spoke in one prolonged roll, and the incessant lightning disclosed a turmoil of leaping waters, driving logs, and the big trees bending before a brutal and merciless force." The name of Mr. Joseph Conrad is new to us, but it appears to us as if he might become the Kipling of the Malay Archipelago.
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