Typhoon - Hardcover

Joseph, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671708651 ISBN 13: 9780671708658

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1991

Synopsis

In the forbidden waters of the White Sea, the captain and crew of the "USS Reno" witness the destruction of one of the Soviet secret bases by a Soviet submarine, and soon commander "Plutonium Jack" Gunner is caught in an internecine battle in enemy waters

About this title

About the Author:

Polish author Joseph Conrad is considered to be one of the greatest English-language novelists, a remarkable achievement considering English was not his first language. Conrad s literary works often featured a nautical setting, reflecting the influences of his early career in the Merchant Navy, and his depictions of the struggles of the human spirit in a cold, indifferent world are best exemplified in such seminal works as Heart of Darkness, Lord JimM, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, and Typhoon. Regarded as a forerunner of modernist literature, Conrad s writing style and characters have influenced such distinguished writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, and George Orwell, among many others. Many of Conrad s novels have been adapted for film, most notably Heart of Darkness, which served as the inspiration and foundation for Francis Ford Coppola s 1979 film Apocalypse Now.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Hard-line Soviet submarine commanders rattle their rockets and threaten the future of democracy in the decaying empire. An American boat and a nonpolitical admiral stand between the Leninists and their goal. Real-life events have done damage to the setup of Joseph's second Soviet submarine thriller (after To Kill the Potemkin, 1986). Admirals Valotin and Deminov, who control the six enormous Typhoon-class ballistic submarines sailing from Arctic ports, plan to use nuclear blackmail to eliminate the threatened breakup of the Soviet Union. For the plan to succeed, the admirals know they must remove from action Admiral Zenko, the brilliant father of strategic submarine warfare. Zenko, who puts politics way behind seamanship, gets the tip despite his superiors' drastic security efforts, and takes his own Taifun safely from port just in time to go to war with his superiors. The battlefield is the White Sea, that great northern bay claimed in its entirety by the Soviets and off-limits to all other navies. Soviet rules notwithstanding, Taifun has company, the USS Reno, an American hunter-killer submarine with a skipper quite as skillful as Admiral Zenko. Reno tails Taifun, Taifun tails Sovyetskii Soyuz, whose Stalinist captain has programmed his missiles to hit Tblisi, Georgia, instead of the US. Torpedoes run. For those who can ignore the already dated politics: a tense, tight naval thriller. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0671708651
• ISBN 13: 9780671708658
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300