Freya of the Seven Isles — Joseph Conrad

There is a degree of bliss too intense for elation.

This little-known novella from one of the masters of the form is so unusual for Joseph Conrad's work in several respects, although not in its exotic maritime setting or its even more exotic prose -- it is unusual in that it is one of his very few works to feature a woman as a leading character, and to take the form of a romance.

Still, it's a Conradian romance: a sweeping saga set in the Indian Ocean basin, against a turbulent background of barely suppressed hostilities between Dutch and British merchant navies, told by one of Conrad's classically detached narrators. In the end, the unique perspective of the sharply etched character of Freya is one of Conrad's most piercing studies of how the lust for power can drive men to greatness -- or its opposite.

The Art of The Novella Series

Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.