Synopsis

Amy Foster is a short story by Joseph Conrad written in 1901, first published in the Illustrated London News , and collected in Typhoon and Other Stories . A poor emigrant from Central Europe sailing from Hamburg to America is shipwrecked off the coast of England. The residents of nearby villages, at first unaware of the sinking, and hence of the possibility of survivors, regard him as a dangerous tramp and madman. He speaks no English; his strange foreign language frightens them, and they offer him no assistance. Eventually "Yanko Goorall" is given shelter and employment by an eccentric old local, Mr. Swaffer. Yanko learns a little English. He explains that his given name Yanko means "little John" and that he was a mountaineer, hence his surname. The story's narrator reveals that Yanko hailed from the Carpathian Mountains.

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