A shipment of silver must be spirited out of a South American port before revolutionary forces seize it, and the task falls to an Italian foreman whose reputation for incorruptible integrity is the most valuable currency in the fictional republic of Costaguana. Conrad constructs this nation with the density of a real one, layering its politics, geography, mining interests, and colonial entanglements into a narrative that moves through time with the confidence of history itself. Published at the height of Conrad's powers, the novel reveals how material interests corrode every ideal they claim to serve. It is perhaps the most ambitious political novel in English, a book in which an entire civilization is weighed and found wanting.