Nostromo (Penguin Books)

"Nostromo", published in 1904, is one of Conrad's finest works. "Nostromo" - though one hundred years old - says as much about today's Latin America as any of the finest recent accounts of that region's turbulent political life. Insistently dramatic in its storytelling, spectacular in its recreation of the subtropical landscape, this picture of an insurrectionary society and the opportunities it provides for moral corruption gleams on every page with its author's dry, undeceived, impeccable intelligence.