Top 100 Classic Books Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. 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. The both mystery and romance Joseph Conrad"s short story The Planter of Malata, set partly in Sydney and partly on the fictional island of Malata, is a tale of unrequited passion and tragic inevitability.