Typhoon is a novel by Joseph Conrad, begun in 1899 and serialized in Pall Mall Magazine in January-March 1902. Its first book publication was in 1902; it was also published as Typhoon and Other Stories in 1903. Typhoon is a classic sea yarn, possibly based upon Conrad's actual experience of seaman's life, and probably on a real incident aboard of the real steamer John P. Best. It describes how Captain MacWhirr sails the Siamese steamer Nan-Shan into a typhoon. Joseph Conrad (born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski(3 December 1857 - 3 August 1924) was a Polish novelist who wrote in English, after settling in England. Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties . He wrote stories and novels, often with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an indifferent universe. He was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature."