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The Secret Agent

With an Introduction by Giles Foden

Joseph Conrad author Giles Foden editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:6th Sep '07

Should be back in stock very soon

The Secret Agent cover

'Spookily topical' - Guardian

‘Spookily topical’ Guardian

Read the world’s first political thriller.


London is under threat.

‘Spookily topical’ Guardian

Read the world’s first political thriller.


London is under threat. It has become a haven for political exiles and anarchists. Frequent bomb threats and disturbances interrupt the lives of the city's inhabitants, who live in fear of the terrorists in their midst. One such terrorist is Verloc. He is the secret agent who is given the mission to strike right at the heart of London's pride by blowing up Greenwich Observatory. But his decision to drag his innocent family into the plot leads to tragic consequences on a more personal than political level.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GILES FODEN

Perenially fascinating... When Joseph Conrad wrote The Secret Agent he was responding imaginatively to a real botched bomb attack on Greenwich, at a time when there was real panic about anarchist extremism throughout Europe * Guardian *
An astonishing book -- Ford Madox Ford
This damp, dark thriller dances about on satirical feet, from its opening paragraph to the very last, where it suddenly plunges like Chernobyl's core to our own apocalyptic times, seamed with petit-bourgeois envy and crazed fundamentalist dreams. Whether attacking the former or the latter, Conrad never lets go of his grim, twitchy smile. -- Adam Thorpe * Guardian *
One of the two unquestionable classics of the first order that [Conrad] added to the English novel -- F.R. Leavis

ISBN: 9780099511533

Dimensions: 199mm x 129mm x 19mm

Weight: 228g

320 pages