Un capitaine, incontestablement borné mais bon marin. Un second officier qui accomplit son office mais pense et questionne les manques de son capitaine. Un officier mécanicien solide et à son affaire. Et une tempête, le typhon, qui menace... L'éviter comme dans les livres de navigation? Bien complexe, sans compter le prix de se dérouter, pense le capitaine: il fonce tout droit pour traverser la tempête. Elle sera un révélateur pour tous...

Joseph Conrad (1857 - 1924) was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. He joined the British merchant marine in 1878, and was granted British citizenship in 1886. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an impassive, inscrutable universe.
Conrad is considered an early modernist, though his works still contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced numerous authors and many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, his works.
Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew on his native Poland's national experiences and his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world-including imperialism and colonialism-and that profoundly explore the human psyche.