Born Jozef Teodor Konrad, Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) served in the British merchant navy before beginning a writing career in the mid 1890s. He relied heavily on his travelling experiences and produced a number of novels, such as Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and Nostromo, that have influenced subsequent writers such as William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie.