The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
Joseph Conrad
The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale
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"The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale" by Joseph Conrad is a novel first published in installments in 1905–1906 and in book form in 1907. Set in 1886 London, it follows Adolf Verloc, a secret agent and shop owner who lives with his wife Winnie and her intellectually disabled brother Stevie. When Verloc is pressured to bomb Greenwich Observatory to provoke public outrage against anarchists, the operation goes catastrophically wrong. The story explores themes of espionage, terrorism, exploitation, and the devastating consequences of deception within a family.
About the author
Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Russian-ruled Ukraine, the son of Polish nationalists who were exiled for it and died of it before he was twelve. He went to sea at sixteen, spent twenty years in the French and British merchant marine and qualified as a master mariner, and only then began to write — in English, his third language, which he had learned in his twenties and always spoke with an accent nobody could place. The command of a Congo river steamer in 1890 broke his health and produced Heart of Darkness. His novels include Lord Jim, Nostromo and The Secret Agent.