All Formats & Editions

Joseph Conrad's dark satire on English society

This chillingly prophetic examination of terrorism by the author of Heart of Darkness is the literary precursor to the espionage thrillers of Graham Greene and John Le Carre. Inspired by an actual attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory, The Secret Agent portrays the world... Read Full Overview

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad is a gripping tale of espionage and intrigue in Victorian England. It follows the story of Mr. Verloc, a shopkeeper and secret agent, who is caught in the middle of a terrorist plot. Along the way, he must battle against the forces of the police,... Read Full Overview

Adolph Verloc leads a double life. As well as running his seedy Soho shop, he is also a secret agent, operating for an underground anarchist cell - and his job is about to get far more dangerous. When his leaders instruct him to plant a bomb at Greenwich Observatory, his plans... Read Full Overview

The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale is a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1907. The story is set in London in 1886 and deals with Mr Adolf Verloc and his work as a spy for an unnamed country (presumably Russia). The Secret Agent is one of Conrad's later political novels in which... Read Full Overview

About The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad "The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale" by Joseph Conrad plunges readers into the shadowy underbelly of late 19th-century London, where intrigue and terrorism collide in a spellbinding dance. At the heart of this captivating narrative... Read Full Overview

Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what... Read Full Overview

"In THE SECRET AGENT Conrad describes seedy London neighborhoods; a cell of refugees and immigrants who plot a revolution behind a dingy storefront; a fanatical expert in explosives who rides the bus clutching his detonator and threatening to blow himself up; an explosion that... Read Full Overview

HarperCollins is proud to present our range of timeless literary classics.

'They swarmed numerous like locusts, industrious like ants, thoughtless like a natural force, pushing on blind and orderly and absorbed, impervious to sentiment, to logic - to terror, too, perhaps.'

Considered... Read Full Overview

The Secret Agent is widely considered one of Conrad's greatest literary achievements. Set in gloomy 1886 London, the novel follows the life of Alfred Verdoc, a Soho shop owner and secret agent who is a member of a largely ineffectual anarchist cell. During a meeting at an unnamed... Read Full Overview

This Norton Critical Edition includes:
- The first English book edition of the novel (1907), accompanied by explanatory footnotes.
- Four illustrations.
- Contemporary sources that informed Conrad's writing of the novel, including newspaper accounts of the "Greenwich... Read Full Overview

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... Read Full Overview

&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LI&&RThe Secret Agent&&L/I&&R, by &&LB&&RJoseph Conrad&&L/B&&R, is part of the &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R&&LI&&R &&L/I&&Rseries, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship,... Read Full Overview

Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what... Read Full Overview

To the destruction of what is.

London, 1886: Adolf Verloc, by day he is a small shop owner who lives uneventfully with his wife, his mother-in-law, and his brother-in-law. By night, he is an agent provocateur. The unnamed country in which employs his... Read Full Overview

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... Read Full Overview

Presenting The Secret Agent (Large Print Edition) by Joseph Conrad. This classic is part of The Great Books Series by Golding Books. The Secret Agent is a classic work of espionage fiction, a spy thriller that is also described as a political novel, with other themes including... Read Full Overview

Adolf Verloc is working as a spy in London, when he's recruited to commit a terrorist act that could endanger the lives of countless citizens. It's a professional decision that has an unexpected impact on his personal life.

Adolf Verloc lives in London and runs... Read Full Overview