The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

'Elevated the spy story into literature in a way that would inspire Greene and le Carré' (Observer ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'An impenetrable mystery seems destined to hang for ever over this act of madness or despair.' Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be 'A Simple Tale' proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats and London's fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations. Based on the text which Conrad's first English readers enjoyed, this new edition includes a critical introduction which describes Conrad's great London novel as the realization of a 'monstrous town', a place of idiocy, madness, criminality, and butchery.

The Secret Agent (1907) is a compelling tale of espionage and terrorism set in Edwardian London. This new edition is based on a painstaking comparison of the original manuscript of the work. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

An actual event – a bomb attack on Greenwich Observatory in 1894 – provided the inspiration for 'The Secret Agent'. But Conrad offers more than a simple account of a bungled attempt at revolution. He provides an absorbing study of characters who disturb us as much as they enlist our sympathies. Mr Verloc, the secret agent of the title, who peddles shady wares; his anarchist friends – the ineffectual Michaelis, the philandering Comrade Ossipon, and the Professor, single-minded in his pursuit of the perfect detonator. Above all, it is the story of Verloc's wife, Winnie, and her journey from security to 'utter desolation, madness and despair.'

A challenging and exciting story, rightly acknowledged as a masterpiece of twentieth century literature.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

With an Introduction and Notes by Hugh Epstein, Secretary of the Joseph Conrad Society of Great Britain --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.