Read Heart of Darkness in English — and understand every line.
Read “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad in English. Tap any word for its meaning, hear how it sounds, and save it to a memory-driven review schedule.
Start for free · no card, no signup wall
DICTIONARY
TRANSLATION
apreciar, atesorar
to feel warm affection for; to hold something dear.
Tap a word for its translation and part of speech — then save it to your list.
The opening
How “Heart of Darkness” begins
The Nellie , a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.
The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway.
In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits.
Public domain — the whole book is yours to read in the app.
Vocabulary
Words to know before you start
The 30 words you will meet most often in “Heart of Darkness” at level B2 and above, with how many times each one appears.
- fellow
- darkness
- bush
- wilderness
- soul
- stream
- shore
- glance
- shadow
- devil
- deck
- reach
- tone
- fool
- vanish
- afterwards
- strike
- crawl
- immense
- whisper
- aspect
- approach
- desire
- assure
- absurd
- sway
- stare
- affair
- depth
- patch
The meanings here are the everyday ones. In the reader, tap a word to see the sense this sentence uses.
Grammar
Grammar you will meet in “Heart of Darkness”
How much of each kind of grammar “Heart of Darkness” uses, counted in the sentences the Reader marks: per 10,000 words, compared with the other books in the library.
- Relative clauses
- Perfect tenses
- Phrasal verbs
- Passive voice
- Modal verbs
- -ing forms and to-infinitives
- Reported speech
- Conditionals
Constructions to look for
- Past participle clause There were cases of them down at the coast—cases—piled up—burst—split!
- Phrasal verb with 'up' and preposition It must have made some of the pilgrims sit up in their hovels.
- Past perfect active Finally I descended the hill, obliquely, towards the trees I had seen.
Counted the way the Reader shows it: one card per construction in a sentence. Open the book in the Reader and tap a highlighted phrase to see the rule.
Library
What you get while you read
-
Tap to translate
Tap any word to see what it means in this exact sentence — with pronunciation and a clear example.
-
Save what matters
Add a word and it comes back on a spaced-repetition schedule timed to how memory actually works.
-
Grammar in context
Notable structures light up in the text, with a short explanation tied to the sentence you're reading.
About the book
Why Heart of Darkness is a great book to read in English
Marlow steams up an African river toward Kurtz, the company's most brilliant agent — and the further he goes, the less the official story holds. Conrad's 1899 novella is short but dense, with long, atmospheric sentences that reward an advanced reader's patience.
On LangOrbit you read “Heart of Darkness” with a safety net: the translation is one tap away when a sentence runs long, every word opens its meaning in context and can be saved for spaced-repetition review, and the grammar behind the trickier lines is explained right where you meet it.
Keep reading
More books to read in English
Every title opens with the same dictionary, grammar help, and translation — start reading for free.
Heart of Darkness
Read “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad in English. Tap any word for its meaning, hear how it sounds, and save it to a memory-driven review schedule.
Read in the ReaderStart for free · no card, no signup wall