The Secret Agent

The classic tale of terrorism from one of the twentieth century's greatest novelists. To his friends and family Adolf Verloc is a typical London businessman. But in reality he is a secret agent for a foreign government. His assignment has been to stir up trouble among the local anarchist groups, but when his handlers become frustrated with his lack of progress, they demand a new course of action: Verloc will bomb the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. A masterpiece of intricate plotting and dark realism, The Secret Agent skips backward and forward in time as the repercussions of its central event are felt by every character - from the radicals who think Verloc is one of their own to the wife and brother-in-law he traps in his whirlwind of destruction. This is one of Joseph Conrad's finest novels, and a portrait of the devastating effects of extremism, as relevant today as when it was first published more than a century ago.