Heart of Darkness is a novella (published in 1902) by Joseph Conrad. Before publication, it appeared in a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine (1899). This highly symbolic story is actually a story within a story, or frame tale, following a man named Charlie Marlow as he recounts his adventure to a group of men on a ship at dusk and continuing into the evening. It details an incident earlier in Marlow's life, a journey on what readers can assume is the Congo River (although the name of the country Marlow is visiting is never specified in the text) to investigate the work of Kurtz, a Belgian ivory trader in the Congo Free State.