"Journey into a Dark Heart" was first published in Danish in 1990 in Peter Høeg's Fortællinger om naten, a collection of eight short stories about love that take place on the night of March 19, 1929. This collection, which was translated into English in 1998 as Tales of the Night, set the standard for contemporary Danish writers. Despite this fact, Høeg is mostly known for his novels. His most famous novel, translated into English in 1993, is Smilla's Sense of Snow. Høeg's short fiction displays the same blend of narrative skill and intellectual range that has made his novels so popular. "Journey into a Dark Heart" is saturated with historical references, including as characters two noted men from history: author Joseph Conrad (posing under his real name of Joseph Korzeniowski) and the German World War I veteran Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, which is referred to several times in the story, draws on his knowledge of the horrors of colonialism, which he witnessed during a voyage up the Congo River. In a similar fashion, Høeg's "Journey into a Dark Heart" introduces the character David Rehn, a naïve young mathematician who is obsessed with truth. Through the many conversations with the other two men on their fateful train trip into the Congo, David's Western notions about colonial Africa are challenged. The story can be found in the paperback version of Tales of the Night, which was published by Penguin Books in 1999.