The Shadow Line

The Shadow Line: A Confession by Joseph Conrad (originally serialized in Metropolitan Magazine, 1916) is a nautical psychological novella presented here in its 1917 book edition. The narrative concerns a young merchant sailor who impulsively abandons a well-suited position aboard an Eastern ship—an Arab-owned steamer trading among tropical islands—seized by restless dissatisfaction with his life. Landing at a port, he takes rooms at the Officers' Sailors' Home to await passage homeward. The first section establishes his troubled state of mind through encounters with his former shipmates (a sympathetic captain, critical second engineer, dyspeptic chief engineer) and introduces figures at the Home, including the anxious Chief Steward, the dignified Hamilton, and Captain Giles. Conrad's meditative prose explores the psychological crisis of early youth and the protagonist's unexplained impulse to abandon security.