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The Secret Agent
- Author
- Joseph Conrad
- Narrator
- Geoffrey Howard
- Publish Date
- 23 April 2009
- Run Time
- 8 hours 52 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
Inspired by an actual attempted terrorist attack in nineteenth-century London, The Secret Agent offers a chillingly prophetic portrait of contemporary terrorism, even famously inspiring the Unabomber. The literary precursor to the espionage novels of such writers as Graham Greene and John le Carr├®, Conrad's intense political thriller resonates more strongly than ever in today's world, where a handful of fanatics can still play mad politics and victimize the innocent.
Mr. Verloc is a double agent who operates a seedy shop in Soho, where he lives with his wife, her mother, and her idiot brother. When Verloc is assigned a dangerous act of sabotage, it has disastrous repercussions for his own family. Conrad paints a corrupt London underworld where terrorists and politicians, grotesques and foreign diplomats, fanatics and fashionable society are surprisingly intermingled. As Conrad brilliantly explores the confused motives that lie at the heart of terrorism, his savagely ironic voice is concerned not just with politics but with the desperate fates of ordinary people.
Critics Review
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“The most brilliant novelistic study of terrorism.”
New York Times
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“Conrad weaves the themes of spying, politics, and moral tumult into a humdinger of a novel.”
Independent
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“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
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“One of Conrad’s supreme masterpieces…one of the unquestioned classics of the first order that he added to the English novel.”
F. R. Leavis
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Joseph Conrad
- Narrator
- Geoffrey Howard
- Duration
- 8 hours 52 minutes
- Release Date
- 23 April 2009
- ISBN
- 9781481577328
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Classic fiction, Fiction: general and literary
Synopsis
Inspired by an actual attempted terrorist attack in nineteenth-century London, The Secret Agent offers a chillingly prophetic portrait of contemporary terrorism, even famously inspiring the Unabomber. The literary precursor to the espionage novels of such writers as Graham Greene and John le Carr├®, Conrad's intense political thriller resonates more strongly than ever in today's world, where a handful of fanatics can still play mad politics and victimize the innocent.Mr. Verloc is a double agent who operates a seedy shop in Soho, where he lives with his wife, her mother, and her idiot brother. When Verloc is assigned a dangerous act of sabotage, it has disastrous repercussions for his own family. Conrad paints a corrupt London underworld where terrorists and politicians, grotesques and foreign diplomats, fanatics and fashionable society are surprisingly intermingled. As Conrad brilliantly explores the confused motives that lie at the heart of terrorism, his savagely ironic voice is concerned not just with politics but with the desperate fates of ordinary people.
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