Victory: An Island Tale

Axel Heyst, the protagonist of Victory: An Island Tale, is one of the most memorable characters in Joseph Conrad's entire body of work — a restless drifter who initially pursues a solitary and isolated existence, but finds himself compelled by love and compassion to engage with his fellow humans. However, the book's disjointed structure and shifting (non-Heyst) perspectives make it one of Conrad's more inconsistent and frustrating novels.