ALMAYERS FOLLY, Conrads (and astonishingly competent) first novel in English, takes place in Indonesia, where a Dutch colonial whose business has failed wishes to escape the island and his malignant marriage. His only hope is to marry his daughter off to a European so he can leave with her--but his daughter has her own ideas about the kind of life she wants. Raised in Borneo, she wants only to remain there and is, in fact, being courted by a local princeling. Conrad addresses the questions of colonialism and interracialism as he tells two interlocking stories, one of a lost and ...