"Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard" is a novel by Joseph Conrad, created in 1904 and set in the fictitious South American republic of "Costaguana." The inspiration for the story came from Conrad's young years. At the age of seventeen, when he served aboard a ship in the Gulf of Mexico, the future writer heard a story of a man who had stolen, single-handedly, a whole lighter full of silver. Conrad returned to the motif 25 years later, as he accidentally bought a diary in a used-book shop in which the author related how he worked for years aboard a schooner whose master claimed to be that very thief who had stolen the silver.