“There’s a long and noble tradition of literary critics misunderstanding Joseph Conrad. … Far more words have been written about him than he ever wrote himself – and not everyone can get it right all the time. Especially when you throw combustible postcolonial issues into the mix. Time has a cruel habit of amplifying those mistakes. A century after he was writing, any negative predictions about Conrad’s long-term durability, for instance, seem hilariously misguided.”