Joseph Conrad was one of the foremost British novelists of the modernist period. Many of the narrative innovations he developed appeared a decade or more before similar technical experimentation became the norm among modernist writers. Furthermore, his radical skepticism was a stark contrast to the Edwardian optimism evident in the years prior to the First World War and anticipates the disillusionment so many modernist writers felt during the post-war era. Best known for ‘Heart of Darkness’, Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, ‘The Secret Sharer’, and Under Western Eyes, Conrad influenced numerous writers who followed him, such as William Faulkner, Graham Greene, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and an entire generation of African writers who often found themselves in dialogue with Conrad {-} for example, Chinua Achebe and J. M. Coetzee.