"The Heirs of the World," by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford: where Greenland was already coveted
By Didier Jacob
Published on
Portrait of Joseph Conrad (1857 - 1924). MARY EVANS/SIPA
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Review A philanthropic and megalomaniacal financier leads an international campaign to exploit (already!) the resources of Greenland... A very political novel in which Conrad dismantles the actions of the colonial party of the time! ★★★★☆
It's a forgotten oak in Joseph Conrad's bibliographical forest. A four-handed novel written with his friend Ford Madox Ford while the still-unknown Joseph was renting his house at Pent Farm in Kent from the latter. As a neighbor, Conrad had also met H.G. Wells, author of "The War of the Worlds" and a pioneer of British science fiction. Conrad, a science fiction author? A curious character from "The Twilight Zone" haunts this otherwise very political novel, whose heroes are named Churchill and the Duke of Mersch.
In a scholarly preface, Paul Decottignies reveals that Conrad was inspired by the latter during a stay of the Belgian King in the Congo. Conrad transposed the Congo to Greenland, whose underground riches de Mersch wants to appropriate. Yes, you read that right, Greenland was already coveted, well before Trump, by the Western powers, and Conrad dismantles the actions of the colonial party of the time. But the book is above all an opportunity…
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