Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. An Outcast of the Islands is Conrad's second novel, but in its theme, in its impressionistic use of scenery, and in the enormous richness and power of the writing, it predicts Conrad's position as a literary figure of the highest rank. Peter Willems, a clerk in Macassar, granted a "second chance" at a remote river trading post, falls ever more hopelessly into traps set by himself and others. A parable of human frailty, with love and death the major players, this is a story of a man unable to understand others and fated never to possess his own soul.