Hastily written in pencil and serialized in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899 as and ldquo;The Heart of Darkness and rdquo; and later published in book form in 1902 as Heart of Darkness, the sibylline charm of the novel has established it as one of the most important canonical texts of British literature. Critics have seen the book as an and lsquo;angry document on absurd and brutal exploitation' (Guerard), and lsquo;probably the greatest short novel in English' (Karl), and lsquo;an annunciation of the Savage God' (Cox), an adventure story, an early instance of modern fiction, an existential novel and an early specimen of New Historicism. The novel and lsquo ;turns on a double paradox' (Hillis Miller) and and lsquo; addresses itself simultaneously to Europe's exploitation of Africa, the primeval human situation, an archaic aspect of the mind's structure and a condition of moral baseness' (Parry). But at the same time the novel has elicited an angry reaction from Chinua Achebe who calls Conrad, and lsquo; a bloody racist. 'The present study, one in the series of Atlantic Critical Studies, attempts to make a close reading of the novel and examines its various aspects with lucidity and profundity, never losing, however, the touch with the reality of the academic needs of the students of English literature.