Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1902 publication it appeared as a three-part series (1899) in Blackwood's Magazine. It is widely regarded as a significant work of English literature and part of the Western canon.

The story tells of Charles Marlow an Englishman who took a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa. Heart of Darkness exposes the dark side of European colonization while exploring the three levels of darkness that the protagonist Marlow encounters: the darkness of the Congo wilderness the darkness of the Europeans' cruel treatment of the natives and the unfathomable darkness within every human being for committing heinous acts of evil. Although Conrad does not give the name of the river at the time of writing the Congo Free State the location of the large and important Congo River was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. In the story Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver. However his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz another ivory trader to civilization in a cover-up. Kurtz has a reputation throughout the region.