Other editions of book The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale

The Secret Agent is Joseph Conrad's dark satire on English society,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, Verloc must deal with the repercussions of his actions. While rooted in the Edwardian period, Conrad's tale remains strikingly contemporary, with its depiction of Londoners gripped by fear of the terrorists living in their midst.

Excerpt from The Secret Agent: A Simple TaleThe origin of The Secret Agent subject, treat ment, artistic purpose and every other motive that may induce an author to take up his pen, can, I believe, be traced to a period of mental and emotional reaction.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

One of the greatest English writers of the 19th century was a Polish-born man who couldn’t even speak English fluently until he had entered adulthood. Nevertheless, Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) went on to have a well-regarded literary career that bridged Romanticism and Modernism while also covering the zenith and twilight of the British empire. Conrad used his experience within the British empire to write novels and stories that often used the sea and navy as a setting, juxtaposing the individual human spirit with the collective duty and honor of the British navy. And though it was a second-language, Conrad mastered English prose.