Product Description

In the only novel Conrad set in London, "The Secret Agent" communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verloc, a Russian spy working for the police, and ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho. His masters instruct him to discredit the anarchists in a humiliating fashion, and when his evil plan goes horribly awry, Verlac must deal with the repercussions of his actions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31678 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
Joseph Conrad was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under Tsarist autocracy. In 1874 Conrad travelled to Marseilles, where he served in French merchant vessels before joining a British ship in 1878 as an apprentice. In 1886 he obtained British nationality. Eight years later he left the sea to devote himself to writing, publishing his first novel, <I>Almayer's Folly</I>, in 1895. The following year he settled in Kent, where he produced within fifteen years such modern classics as <I>Youth, Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo, The Secret Agent</I> and <I>Under Western Eyes</I>. He continued to write until his death in 1924.

Customer Reviews

A Passage to Blighty
E.M. Forster apparently said something to the effect that Conrad's London in 'The Secret Agent' was too dark a place: a foreigners projection of European anxieties onto, in reality, a far more benevolent scene. It's true, Conrad's vision of England's capital is dark, but you'd have to say that it is no darker than, say, moments in Dickens', or even T.S. Eliot's 'Wasteland'. Developments in both the world of Crime Thrillers, and in the reality of terrorism and espionage suggest that Conrad was certainly onto something. Indeed, many now current clichés of the genre can be seen to originate from Conrad's book: mainly that the criminal and the policeman; the terrorist and the 'keeper of the peace' are not worlds apart. Few contemporary writers, however, are quite as keen and scrupulous as Conrad, who is never shy of taking us into the deepest and darkest places in the modern political psyche. Conrad's prose is as intensely atmospheric, as psychologically penetrating, and as layered with ironies as anything you will read in English. Sometimes it takes an 'outsider view' to tell you hard things about your beloved little Island. You won't get Merchant Ivory touching Conrad.

Clever and involving story of "terrorist" action gone wrong
Verloc is an Embassy spy in London at the end of the nineteenth century, who is informed by his (rather shady) employers that it is time he earned his pay by doing more than just submitting reports. The choice of action he chooses to appease those at the Embassy forms the basis of the book, and we see how other characters are affected by what he decides.

At times "The Secret Agent" is a little heavy-going - a section near the middle of the book discussing the Assistant Commissioner of Police and a Chief Inspector enlightens us as to these characters but the circular nature of their conversations grates a little and I felt anxious for the action to return to the far more interesting Mr. Verloc & family. Indeed in Verloc, his wife, brother - and mother - in law, Conrad creates entirely credible, very human characters, and their pain is conveyed to the reader in a manner which made me think: "Yes, that's exactly what people are like."

The ending of the book is a little predictable, but skillfully executed. My major criticism would be the depiction of the shadowy revolutionists - I was never quite sure what they were rebelling against, or why, and they were not as credible as the other characters. This, however, may have been Conrad's aim.

On the whole, an original story which is at times very involving. It also has some very funny moments which are usually quite unexpected, but which seem to work, nonetheless.

Not all that simple
Conrad's prose is dense, difficult and gorgeous. Before you pick up a book like this, you need to prepare yourself for an author who will happily write eight pages or so of prose between two lines in a conversation and not apologise (in fact there is, as is customary for Conrad, a self-justifying foreword). Patience will reward you with a surprising and darkly humorous tale of anarchists learning that real sources of chaos, anarchy and violence have little to do with abstract ideas.

It's not much like Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness is perhaps more important in the history of literature, but this is bigger, richer and more enjoyable. Read both.