Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski was born on 3 December 1857 and died on 3 August 1924. He is better known as Joseph Conrad. Conrad was a Polish-British writer viewed as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Although he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. Conrad wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting that portrayed trials of the human spirit in the middle of what he saw as an impassive, enigmatic universe.
Conrad is considered an early modernist, even though his works contain elements of the 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced numerous authors, and many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, his works. Numerous writers and critics have commented that Conrad's fictional works, written largely in the first two decades of the 20th century, appear to have anticipated later world events.
The line in the excerpt from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that indicates a flashback is:
((but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in a hesitating voice, "I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water sailor for a bit," that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences.))
