Joseph Conrad wrote extensively about seamen, both of the commercial and naval variety, and their dual identities of being both within and outside of the civilizations that they came from. Other of Conrad's major works that explore this dual identity are Heart of Darkness, "The Shadow-Line," "The N*gger of 'Narcissus,'" and "Typhoon."
Other works contemporary to Conrad's that deal with modern man's alienation from society and the complexities of consciousness include Franz Kafka's The Trial, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, the short stories of Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment, and the early works of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner.
