Book description
With a note by the author.
'Madness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I'll move the world'
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.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction
written in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first
novels, to the beginning of the First World War.
Joseph Conrad was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under
Tsarist autocracy. In 1874 he 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, before leaving
the sea eight years later to devote himself to writing. He published
his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1895, and produced within
fifteen years such astounding works as Youth, Heart of Darkness,
Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes and
Victory. He continued to write until his death in 1924.
Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and Nostromo are
also published in the Penguin English Library.
