12 h 9 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 12 h 9 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if your first great love draws you into a cause you barely understand?
In Marseilles in the 1870s, young Monsieur George longs for experience, love and something worth serving. Mr Mills introduces him to Doña Rita, a wealthy woman whose presence draws admiration and gossip. As George falls under her spell, he enters a circle where private feeling and political loyalty are hard to separate.
Rita supports the Carlist cause, which needs money, arms and passage by sea. George becomes involved in its work as his love deepens. In Joseph Conrad's The Arrow of Gold, the older George recalls this youth with tenderness and doubt, asking how much his younger self can truly see through the dazzle of first love.
What you’ll discover
- First love under pressure Follow George's intense devotion as desire draws him closer to political risks.
- A woman beyond gossip Meet Doña Rita, whose wealth and guarded inner life resist the judgments surrounding her.
- A port of secret loyalties Enter a Marseilles of sailors, exiles and schemers, where introductions open uncertain doors.
- The sea behind the intrigue Sail alongside George and the skilled Dominic Cervoni as the cause demands practical risks.
- Memory touched by doubt Hear an older man revisit youthful certainty with fondness and a more questioning eye.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this if you love sea adventures, secret plots and old Marseilles, or a love story told by a man looking back on his youth with a clear and honest memory.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A Carnival night draws a young man in
- Two men sketch a woman before he sees her
- Doña Rita steps into the room
- Smugglers, a sailing boat and a limp hand
- A goatherd girl and her formidable sister
- Love turns into torment
- A lunch with the mother of Captain Blunt
- Rose warns him about Rita's loneliness
- What the story is really about
Who’s who
- Monsieur GeorgeA young sailor, thoughtless and open, who tells the story years later and falls helplessly in love with Doña Rita.
- Doña RitaThe heiress of the painter Henry Allègre, once a Basque goatherd, who wants peace and a place where she is not an object.
- Captain BluntAn elegant cavalry officer in the Carlist army, American, Catholic and sleepless, who loves Rita and resents it.
- ThereseRita's pious peasant sister, who keeps the house in the Street of Consuls and wants the house for herself.
- RoseRita's silent, devoted maid, who watches over her mistress and fears for her safety.
- DominicAn old Mediterranean sailor and smuggler who captains the boat and teases the young man about his devotion.
- Mrs. BluntThe captain's elegant mother, who lives by her wits and has plans for Rita and her fortune.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 12 h 9 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 7 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear La Flèche d’or in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
La Flèche d’or
by Joseph Conrad · 1919
On Carnival night in Marseilles, a young sailor hears of Doña Rita and joins a gunrunning plot.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
What does a young man risk for a woman who says she does not exist? On the last night of Carnival in Marseilles, a restless sailor meets two strangers and hears a story that changes his life.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A Carnival night draws a young man in
The story opens in Marseilles, on the last evening of Carnival, in a bright cafe on the Cannebière. The narrator is very young, just back from his second voyage to the West Indies, and his friends in the artists' circle call him Young Ulysses. He is bored and a little lonely, and he has been hoping to meet a quiet Englishman named Mills.
Mills arrives with a friend, Captain Blunt, a slim and perfectly dressed officer in the cavalry of Don Carlos, the pretender fighting for the Spanish throne. Blunt is an American from South Carolina, and he declares that he lives by his sword. Mills tells the tale of his shipwreck on the French coast while carrying arms to the Carlists, chased there by a Republican ironclad.
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What is The Arrow of Gold about?
It follows a young sailor in Marseilles who joins a plot to smuggle arms to the Carlists and falls in love with Doña Rita, the heiress of a painter. The love story and the smuggling plot run side by side.
What does the arrow of gold mean in the book?
It is a jeweled ornament Rita wears in her hair. To the narrator it becomes a symbol of her and of the love he cannot grasp, and it returns in his dreams and in the closing scenes.
Who are the Carlists in The Arrow of Gold?
They are supporters of Don Carlos de Bourbon, who took up arms in northern Spain in the 1870s to claim the throne. The novel follows the people who supply them with guns from the French coast.
The author
Joseph Conrad
1857–1924 · Polish-British novelist
Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was a Polish-British writer born in Berdychiv, then in the Russian Empire and now in Ukraine. He worked at sea before settling in England. He wrote in English. His works include Heart of Darkness (1899), Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), and The Secret Agent (1907).
More by Joseph Conrad
All 22 booksMore like this
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