Skip to Main Content (Press Enter)
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
Add The Secret Agent to bookshelf
Add to Bookshelf

Look Inside

The Secret Agent

A Simple Tale

Introduction by Paul Theroux

By Joseph Conrad
Introduction by Robert D. Kaplan
Edited by Peter Mallios

By Joseph Conrad
Introduction by Robert D. Kaplan
Edited by Peter Mallios

By Joseph Conrad
Introduction by Paul Theroux

By Joseph Conrad
Introduction by Paul Theroux

By Joseph Conrad

By Joseph Conrad

Best Seller

Part of Modern Library 100 Best Novels

Part of Everyman's Library Classics Series

Part of Modern Library 100 Best Novels

Paperback $18.00

Dec 14, 2004 | ISBN 9780812973051

Hardcover $26.00

Dec 15, 1992 | ISBN 9780679417231

Ebook $3.99

Nov 01, 2000 | ISBN 9780679641278

All Formats
+
    The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
    Paperback $18.00
    Dec 14, 2004 | ISBN 9780812973051

    Buy from Other Retailers:

    See All Formats (2) +
    • $18.00

      Dec 14, 2004 | ISBN 9780812973051

      Buy from Other Retailers:

    • $26.00

      Dec 15, 1992 | ISBN 9780679417231

      Buy from Other Retailers:

    • Nov 01, 2000 | ISBN 9780679641278

      Buy from Other Retailers:

    Buy the Ebook:

    About The Secret Agent

    Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

    Edited and with Notes by Peter Lancelot Mallios
    Introduction by Robert D. Kaplan

    In reexamining The Secret Agent in a post-9/11 world, Robert D. Kaplan praises Joseph Conrad’s “surgical insight into the mechanics of terrorism,” calling the book “a fine example of how a savvy novelist may detect the future long before a social scientist does.”

    This intense 1907 thriller–a precursor to works by Graham Greene and John le Carré–concerns a British double agent who infiltrates a cabal of anarchists. Conrad explores political and criminal intrigue in a modern society, building to a climax that the critic F. R. Leavis deemed “one of the most astonishing triumphs of genius in fiction.”

    About The Secret Agent

    Inspired by an attempt in 1894 to blow up London’s Greenwich Observatory, The Secret Agent is the unsurpassed original of the long tradition of espionage thrillers that explore the confused motives at the heart of terrorism. Published in 1907, Joseph Conrad’s novel was remarkably prescient, anticipating the political contours of the next century, as well as the classic spy novels of such later writers as Graham Greene and John Le Carré.

    Conrad’s double agent, Verloc, is a Russian spy tasked with infiltrating an anarchist group in London. His mission to discredit the ineffectual radicals and their cause goes awry, and involves his unsuspecting wife and her vulnerable younger brother in disastrous ways. In its use of powerful psychological insight to intensify narrative suspense, The Secret Agent broke new literary ground. Conrad was the first novelist to discover the strange, in-between territory of the political exile, and his genius was such that we still have no truer map of that region’s moral terrain than his story of a terrorist plot and its tragic consequences for both the guilty and the innocent.

    Introduction by Paul Theroux

    (Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed).

    About The Secret Agent

    Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

    The Secret Agent is the unsurpassed ancestor of a long series of twentieth-century novels and films which explore the confused motives that lie
    at the heart of political terrorism. In its use of powerful psychological insight to intensify narrative suspense, it set the terms by which subsequent
    works in its genre were created. Conrad was the first novelist to discover the strange in-between territory of the political exile, and his genius was
    such that we still have no truer map of that region’s moral terrain than his story of a terrorist plot and its tragic consequences for the guilty and
    innocent alike.

    Read An Excerpt

    Read An Excerpt

    Read An Excerpt

    Also in Everyman’s Library Classics Series

    Resurrection
    Byron's Travels

    Also by Joseph Conrad

    Victory
    The Secret Agent
    Youth
    Heart of Darkness
    Under Western Eyes
    See all books by Joseph Conrad

    Also by Joseph Conrad

    Victory
    The Secret Agent
    Youth
    Heart of Darkness
    Under Western Eyes
    See all books by Joseph Conrad

    Also by Joseph Conrad

    Victory
    The Secret Agent
    Youth
    Heart of Darkness
    Under Western Eyes
    See all books by Joseph Conrad

    About Joseph Conrad

    Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Ukraine, in 1857. After both of his parents died of tuberculosis, Conrad went to live with his uncle in Switzerland. After attending school in Kraków, he joined the French and then the British merchant marines,… More about Joseph Conrad

    About Joseph Conrad

    Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Ukraine, in 1857. After both of his parents died of tuberculosis, Conrad went to live with his uncle in Switzerland. After attending school in Kraków, he joined the French and then the British merchant marines,… More about Joseph Conrad

    About Joseph Conrad

    Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Ukraine, in 1857. After both of his parents died of tuberculosis, Conrad went to live with his uncle in Switzerland. After attending school in Kraków, he joined the French and then the British merchant marines,… More about Joseph Conrad

    Product Details

    Category: Classic Fiction | Suspense & Thriller

    Paperback | $18.00
    Published by Modern Library
    Dec 14, 2004 | 352 Pages | 5-3/16 x 8 | ISBN 9780812973051

    Category: Classic Fiction | Suspense & Thriller

    Hardcover | $26.00
    Published by Everyman’s Library
    Dec 15, 1992 | 320 Pages | 4-7/8 x 8-1/8 | ISBN 9780679417231

    Category: Classic Fiction | Suspense & Thriller

    Ebook | $3.99
    Published by Modern Library
    Nov 01, 2000 | 272 Pages | ISBN 9780679641278

    YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

    Praise

    “The Secret Agent is an astonishing book. It is one of the best—and certainly the most significant—detective stories ever written.” —Ford Madox Ford

    “The Secret Agent is an altogether thrilling ‘crime story’ . . . a political novel of a foreign embassy intrigue and its tragic human outcome.” —Thomas Mann
     
     “One of Conrad’s supreme masterpieces.” —F. R. Leavis
     
     “[The Secret Agent] was in effect the world’s first political thriller—spies, conspirators, wily policemen, murders, bombings . . .  Conrad was also giving artistic expression to his domestic anxieties—his overweight wife and problem child, his lack of money, his inactivity, his discomfort in London, his uneasiness in English society, his sense of exile, of being an alien . . . The novel has the perverse logic and derangement of a dream.”
    —from the Introduction to the Everyman’s Library edition by Paul Theroux

    Looking for More Great Reads?
    21 Books You’ve Been Meaning to Read

    Visit other sites in the Penguin Random House Network

    Raise kids who love to read

    Brightly

    Raise kids who love to read

    Today's Top Books

    Today's Top Books

    Want to know what people are actually reading right now?

         An online magazine for today’s home cook

    TASTE

    An online magazine for today’s home cook