Joseph Conrad

The Nature of a Crime Joseph Conrad

This work is written in the form of a series of letters from a narrator, who remains nameless throughout the work, to a particular love interest, also left nameless. The narrator is employed as a lawyer, a fact deduced by his reference to his position of holding power of attorney over a few characters in the work. The crime for which he is responsible is that of gambling away money entrusted to him by one of his clients, Edward Burden, who is to be married some time within the occurrence of the novel's events. However, the conflict of the story is that Edward has no idea of the narrator's misuse of his funds, and that the funds are not so destroyed that Edward cannot withdraw what he needs in the short term.