Heart of Darkness   (1899) is a     by     novelist     in which the sailor     tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a     company in the African interior. The novel is widely regarded as a critique of   , whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and morality. Although Conrad does not name the river on which most of the narrative takes place, at the time of writing the   , the location of the large and economically important   , was a private colony of Belgium`s   . Marlow is given a text by Kurtz, an ivory trader working on a trading station far up the river, who has "gone native" and is the object of Marlow`s expedition.