The Secret Agent

First published in 1907, The Secret Agent remains one of Joseph Conrad's most unsettling and strikingly modern novels.

Set amid London's anarchist circles, foreign embassies, and police networks, the novel follows Adolf Verloc, a secret agent ordered to provoke an act of political violence. What begins as political intrigue moves steadily into the private world of the Verloc household, where manipulation, secrecy, and ideology acquire a devastating human cost.

This new annotated edition by Celia Harrow brings Conrad's voice to life for twenty-first-century readers.

Alongside the original text, it offers fresh commentary on:

• the historical world of anarchism, espionage, and the 1894 Greenwich bombing
• Conrad's shifting chronology, irony, and dark political satire
• the relationships between Verloc, Winnie, Stevie, and the novel's revolutionary circle
• the enduring questions of responsibility, manipulation, violence, and moral consequence

More than a novel of terrorism or political conspiracy, The Secret Agent is a powerful examination of what happens when human beings become instruments of ideology, institutions, and other people's ambitions.