Joseph Conrad · 1904 · sea

Joseph Conrad's 1904 novel, set in the invented republic of Costaguana on the Pacific seaboard of South America. A silver mine underwrites a province, a revolution comes, and a lighter carrying a fortune in ingots is taken out into a dark gulf by the one man everybody trusts - after which the silver quietly corrupts every person who touches it.

1. 1
   Sulaco

   Sulaco is cut off from the rest of Costaguana by mountains and has grown rich on the San Tome silver, which an English owner runs as a moral project - and which every faction in the country's endless revolutions therefore wants.

2. 2
   The Golfo Placido

   When the revolution reaches the province the silver is loaded into a lighter and taken out into the gulf at night to keep it from the insurgents - a stretch of water so still and so dark that nothing can be seen at all.

3. 3
   The Great Isabel

   The lighter is run down in the dark and the treasure buried on an island offshore, and the man who hid it is believed to have lost it - and spends the rest of the book quietly taking it, ingot by ingot, and being destroyed by it.