The Secret Sharer
Written by Joseph Conrad
Narrated by Cathy Dobson
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Rather than turn his fugitive-double over to the authorities, the captain hides him in his own cabin. But on such a small ship the situation is untenable. Discovery is inevitable unless he can devise a way to let his alter ego escape before they start the long voyage across the ocean.
A gripping and multi-layered story which leaves as many questions open as it answers. Conrad at his best.
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was a Polish-British writer, regarded as one of the greatest novelists in the English language. Though he was not fluent in English until the age of twenty, Conrad mastered the language and was known for his exceptional command of stylistic prose. Inspiring a reoccurring nautical setting, Conrad’s literary work was heavily influenced by his experience as a ship’s apprentice. Conrad’s style and practice of creating anti-heroic protagonists is admired and often imitated by other authors and artists, immortalizing his innovation and genius.
More audiobooks from Joseph Conrad
The Top 10 Short Stories - European: The top ten short stories of all time written by European authors. Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Shadow-Line Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Six Short Stories (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Secret Sharer
Related audiobooks
Youth & Heart of Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Blue Hotel: A Stephen Crane Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Benito Cereno Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Joseph Conrad: The Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nostromo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dubliners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maggie: A Girl of the Streets Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Necklace Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lord Jim Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rudyard Kipling - The Short Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In the Ravine, and Other Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Metamorphosis and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Typhoon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Top 10 Short Stories - D H Lawrence: The top ten Short Stories written by DH Lawrence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMiss Lonelyhearts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bottle Imp and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Therese Raquin Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Secret Agent Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Manhattan Transfer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Confidence-Man (Unabridged) Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Thomas Hardy The Short Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heart of Darkness (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5B. J. Harrison Reads Moby Dick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Beast in the Jungle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Shadow-Line Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Scarlet Letter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bartleby the Scrivener and other stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Classics For You
The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5To Kill a Mockingbird Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Atlas Shrugged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers in the Attic: 40th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gone With The Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pride and Prejudice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Sherlock Holmes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fountainhead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Gatsby Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sense and Sensibility Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: A New Translation by Caroline Alexander Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frankenstein Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Tale of Two Cities Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/520,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perks of Being a Wallflower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5War & Peace - Volume I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beowulf: Translated by Seamus Heaney Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Crucible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Name of the Rose Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stone Blind: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prince: Machiavelli Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master and Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Thousand Ships: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Series of Unfortunate Events #1 Multi-Voice, A: The Bad Beginning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Secret Sharer
141 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Marvelous, almost magical writing that transports the reader. Never gets old, listening to Conrad, even when the reader is a robot.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brilliant book. Well narrated.
Joseph Conrad has to rank very highly in the Pantheon of writers. Lord Jim, and The Secret Agent being two of his best. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A great, unassuming, evocative "sea" piece that raises questions of identity, loneliness, belonging and...leadership? Yep, I read that this is required reading on some Harvard list of necessary texts on leadership. I can see (sea?) that. I always forget how good Conrad can be until I get around to reading another one.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I inherited Conrad's collected works from my grandfather, and this story was included.I wrote this review for Goodreads's Short Story Club.I didn’t find the story easily comprehensible and the extensive nautical jargon didn’t improve matters. It was the narrator’s first position as captain. He was a stranger to the other officers and crew members, a stranger to the ship and “somewhat of a stranger to myself”. What does he mean by this enigmatic statement - a stranger to himself? I can’t see that he explains it elsewhere in the story, though he may have done. The captain (what is his name?) rescues a man, Leggatt, from the sea; he had been chief mate in a ship called the Sephora, moored nearby. He had accidentally killed another officer and jumped into the sea to escape eventual prosecution. The captain sees Leggatt is no homicidal maniac”, believes his story and thus agrees to hide him. He manges to conceal him in his cabin and gives him a grey “sleeping suit” just like he himself wears. The captain keeps referring to Leggatt as his double. He feels Leggatt is just like himself. He and Leggatt are “”the two strangers in the ship”. Leggatt is the captain’s “other self”. At one point the captain felt “doubly vexed” and “dual more than ever”. Why is the narrator, the captain, so fixated on regarding Leggatt as his “secret self”, a man similar to himself? He also comes to doubt whether Leggatt really is there. “Can it be” --- “that he is not visible to other eyes than mine?” “It was like being haunted.” He feels more comfortable when down below with Leggatt than with any of the others. He feels he is “near insanity”” whereas Leggatt is sane. Conrad uses many words to indicate that things are not as they seem, that they are unreal, for example, “phantom” as in “silent like a phantom sea”. My dictionary defines “phantom” as “not really existing”. Also “dreamy”, as in “a dreamy contemplative appearance”. It seems as if the captain may have some sort of mental problem and sees himself split into two. “And it was as if the ship had two captains”. The captain and Leggatt resemble each other and both wear “sleeping suits” which fact gives us the connotation of the whole thing being a dream. The captain states that part of himself is absent. He refers to “that mental feeling of being in two places at once”. To the consternation of the other officers, the captain agrees to manoeuvre the ship close to some islands so as to allow Leggatt to leave the ship and be able to survive. Leggatt, the captain’s second self, is “a free man --- striking out for a new destiny”. At the end there is a reference to “the gateway of Erebus”. According to my dictionary, Erebus is “the gloomy caverns underground through which the Shades had to walk in their passage to Hades”. To sum up, I will say that it was hard to interpret what Conrad meant to communicate to us by his story. Was he trying to illuminate some sort of psychological split in the captain? Is the whole experience some sort of dream? Is it significant that we never learn the captain’s name, as though he didn’t really exist?
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Conrad's subversive little tale will leave the reader questioning what is real, what defines morality and authority, and leave an aching doubt about the nature of male-bonding...within fewer than a hundred pages.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A good tight story. Well written, compelling. A great writer doesn't have to be obtuse or arcane -- Conrad proves it here.