Chapter V Summary

Chapter Five (V) begins the next night in Southwold, as the narrator and author in part hears a documentary about the last man hung for high treason in the British Isles, one Roger Casement. Even though he fell asleep halfway through hearing the documentary, the chapter then pieces together the story that Sebald heard.

An influential figure in Roger Casement's life was Joseph Conrad, a famous writer who once wrote a book called 'The Heart of Darkness' documenting his own travels into the Congo. Joseph Conrad was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowska. His family travelled from the Ukraine to be reunited with their father Apollo in Warsaw as he tried to instigate a Polish Uprising against the occupying Russians of 1861. At a young age, Jozef Konrad saw his family face internment by the Russian occupation - an event that shattered his...