Victory is a psychological novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...

 first published in 1915, through which Conrad achieved "popular success." The New York Times, however, called it "an uneven book" and "more open to criticism than most of Mr. Conrad's best work."

The novel's "most striking formal characteristic is its shifting narrative and temporal perspective" with the first section from the viewpoint of a sailor, the second from omniscient perspective of Axel Heyst, the third from an interior perspective from Heyst, and the final section.

It has been adapted into film a number of times.

Plot

Through a business misadventure, the European Axel Heyst ends up living on an island in what is now Indonesia, with a Chinese assistant Wang. Heyst visits a nearby island when a female band is playing at a hotel owned by Mr. Schomberg. Schomberg attempts to force himself sexually on one of the band members, Alma, later called Lena. She flees with Heyst back to his island and they become lovers. Schomberg seeks revenge by attempting to frame Heyst for the "murder" of a man who had died of natural causes and later by sending three desperadoes (Pedro, Martin Ricardo and Mr. Jones) to Heyst's island with a lie about treasure hidden on the island. The three die (Wang kills one) but Lena dies as well and Axel is overcome with grief and commits suicide.

Reception, critique and impact

In Notes on My Books: Easyread Edition, Conrad wrote of his "mixed feelings" about the initial reception of the book which had been published while Europe had been engaged in fighting the great war. The initial reception of the work had considered it "a melodramatic, rather Victorian novel, representing Conrad's artistic decline." However, later critiques have described it as "a highly complex allegorical work whose psychological landscape and narrative structure lay the groundwork for the modern novel."

The character of Heyst has been compared to Shakespeare's Hamlet with the story itself drawing heavily on The Tempest

The Tempest

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...

and the ending of the work like "an Elizabethan stageplay where the stage is clogged with corpses" Allen Simmons states that the character of Lena was shaped by Therese from the French novel Le Lys rouge.

Adam Gillon and Raymond Brebach have proposed that Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...

's rejection of Conrad's "souvenir-shop style, and bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist cliches" resulted in Conrad's Victory being "one of the principal sources of inspiration" for Lolita

Lolita

Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...

through what they call "typical Nabakovian reversal."

Adaptations

The novel has been adapted to film multiple times including a 1919 silent version directed by Maurice Tourneur

Maurice Tourneur

Maurice Tourneur was an important international film director and screenwriter.-Life:Born Maurice Thomas in the Belleville district of Paris, France, his father was a jeweler. As a young man, Maurice Thomas first trained as a graphic designer and a magazine illustrator but was soon drawn to the...

 featuring Jack Holt

Jack Holt (actor)

Jack Holt was an American motion picture actor. He was a leading man of silent and sound films, and was known for his many roles in Westerns.-Early life:...

, Seena Owen

Seena Owen

Seena Owen was a Danish-American silent film actress.-Early Life:She was born Signe M. Auen at Spokane, Washington, the youngest of three children raised by Jens Christensen and Karen Auen. Her father and mother came from Denmark in the late 1880s and settled in Minnesota where they married in 1888...

, Lon Chaney, Sr.

Lon Chaney, Sr.

Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...

, and Wallace Beery

Wallace Beery

Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...

; the 1930 William Wellman directed Dangerous Paradise, starring Nancy Carroll

Nancy Carroll

Nancy Carroll was an American actress.-Career:She was christened Ann Veronica Lahiff in New York City. Of Irish parentage, she and her sister once performed a dancing act in a local contest of amateur talent. This led her to a stage career and then to the screen. She began her acting career in...

, Richard Arlen

Richard Arlen

-Biography:Born Sylvanus Richard Van Mattimore in St. Paul, Minnesota, he attended the University of Pennsylvania. He served as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. His first job after the war was with St. Paul's Athletic Club...

 and Warner Oland

Warner Oland

Warner Oland was a Swedish American actor most remembered for his screen role as the detective Charlie Chan.-Biography:He was born Johan Verner Ölund in the village of Nyby, Bjurholm Municipality,...

; the 1940 version, featuring Fredric March

Fredric March

Fredric March was an American stage and film actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr...

, Betty Field

Betty Field

Betty Field was an American film and stage actress. Through her father, she was a direct descendant of the Pilgrims John Alden and Priscilla Mullins....

, and Sir Cedric Hardwicke; and a 1995 version

Victory (1995 film)

Victory is a 1996 film directed by Mark Peploe. The screenplay was written by Peploe based on the novel by Joseph Conrad.The novel previously has been adapted films multiple times including a 1919 silent version directed by Maurice Tourneur featuring Jack Holt, Seena Owen, Lon Chaney, Sr., and...

 directed by Mark Peploe, with Willem Dafoe

Willem Dafoe

Willem Dafoe is an American film, stage, and voice actor, and a founding member of the experimental theatre company The Wooster Group...

, Sam Neill

Sam Neill

Nigel John Dermot "Sam" Neill, DCNZM, OBE is a New Zealand actor. He is well known for his starring role as paleontologist Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III....

, Irène Jacob

Irène Jacob

Irène Marie Jacob is a French-born Swiss actress considered one of the preeminent French actresses of her generation. Jacob gained international recognition and acclaim through her work with Polish film director Krzysztof Kieślowski, who cast her in the lead role of The Double Life of Véronique...

, and Rufus Sewell

Rufus Sewell

Rufus Frederik Sewell is an English actor. In film, he has appeared in The Woodlanders, Dangerous Beauty, Dark City, A Knight's Tale, The Illusionist, Tristan and Isolde, and Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence. On television, he starred in the 2010 mini-series The Pillars of the Earth...

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