Written after The Madness of Almayer and The Tramp of the Islands, his first two novels, in The Black of Narcissus (1897) Joseph Conrad pours part of his experiences as a merchant mariner and ship captain for twenty years. The novel begins in Mumbai as the crew of the ship Narcissus embarks on a long journey back to The Port of London. Conrad narrates with vivid realism and great psychological penetration the vicissitudes of the journey, including a terrible storm and the strange illness of the black cook – James Wait, "the negro of Narcissus", enlisted at the last minute – also Conrad made that journey, on that same sailboat, thirteen years earlier.
On this novel, its author says in the preface: "A black man in the alcazar of a British ship is a lonely being. He lacks friends. However, James Wait, fearful of death, who became his accomplice, was an impostor with character: he mastered our compassion, mocked our sentimentality and emerged victorious in our suspicions... (James Wait) simply represents the center of the ship's collective psychology and the axis of action ... It is the book by which, perhaps not as a novelist, but as an artist who seeks the utmost sincerity of expression, I intend to endure or disappear. Its pages are the homage of my unalterable and deep affection for ships, sailors, winds and the immeasurable sea: the forgings of my youth, the companions of the best years of my life."