Reviews

Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad

nick_jenkins's review against another edition

5.0

The whole novel feels as if it is written on a knife's edge—not suspenseful, but poised, coiled, clenched. I am not sure why any other Conrad novel should be better known or better regarded: nothing else that I have read by him compares with the performance here. It is one of the great novels of the twentieth century, or perhaps it is as true to say it is the last great novel of the nineteenth. Under Western Eyes is to be found stretching toward both Dostoevsky and Camus, or I might almost say between Dostoevsky and Le Carré.

I read that the stress of writing this novel literally (albeit temporarily) broke Conrad's brain. I can certainly believe it; it radiates a sardonic mania.

bookishalicek's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

abookishtype's review against another edition

2.0

Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes is a deeply cynical look at revolution in the early twentieth century. Hardly a chapter passes without one narrators of this book making a pointed observation about dilettantes or poseurs or the naive. And since this book was published in 1911, a lot of these remarks about revolution seem strangely prescient in light of what happened in Russia only a few years later...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.

hayesstw's review against another edition

Some interesting thoughts about revolution and revolutionaries.

Fifty years ago I read the old man's description of Natalia Haldin, "It is hard to think I shall never look any more into the trustful eyes of that girl, wedded to an invincible belief in the advent of loving concord, springing like a heavenly flower from the soil of men's earth, soaked in blood, torn by struggles, watered with tears."

And that put me in mind of the Ascension Day hymn:

He shall come down like showers upon the fruitful earth;
Love, joy, and hope, like flowers, spring in His path to birth.
Before Him, on the mountains, shall peace, the herald, go,
And righteousness, in fountains, from hill to valley flow.