The Secret Agent

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad John Lyon Mr Verloc the
secret agent keeps a shop in Londons 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 Londons fashionable society in the darkest and most
surprising interrelations. Based on the text which Conrads
first English readers enjoyed this new edition includes a
full and up-to-date bibliography a comprehensive
chronology and a critical introduction which describes
Conrads great London novel as the realization of a
monstrous town a place of idiocy madness criminality and
savage butchery. It also discusses contemporary anarchist
activity in the UK imperialism and Conrads narrative
techniques.