Falk. Amy Foster. Tomorrow

Three examples of short prose by the famous British writer originally from Ukraine. Conrad reflects on his own experience of separation from his homeland in the themes of loneliness and wandering, touched upon in the stories “Amy Foster” (1901) and “Tomorrow” (1902). This range of themes is still close to the Ukrainian reader today, since several “waves” of mass emigration live in our memory at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 21st centuries. “Amy Foster” tells the story of an emigrant from Galicia who begins a new life in England, and “Tomorrow” is a story about the return home of a prodigal son, whom his father, an elderly sailor, has been waiting for for years. Meanwhile, in the story “Falk” (1901), there is a contrast, as the author himself noted at the time, between “ordinary human sensitivity and the straightforwardness of a man more or less obedient to his instincts,” a man who is nevertheless honest with his chosen one.