The Arrow of Gold

Marseilles in the 1870s: gun-running for the Carlists, a young sailor called Monsieur George, and Doña Rita — a goatherd's daughter who became a painter's model and then, it was said, the mistress of a royal pretender. Conrad did not learn English properly until his twenties and wrote everything in it, his third language; this late novel returns to his own youth in Marseilles, and how much of it happened is a question he declined to answer. Fifty-nine plates of harbors, sailboats and seascapes by painters including Boudin and Manet run through the book, matching the maritime world Conrad knew.