num_pages: 317
description: The Secret Agent is the unsurpassed ancestor of a long series of twentieth-century novels and films which explore the confused motives that lie at the heart of political terrorism. In its use of powerful psychological insight to intensify narrative suspense, it set the terms by which subsequent works in its genre were created. Conrad was the first novelist to discover the strange in-between territory of the political exile, and his genius was such that we still have no truer map of that region's moral terrain than his story of a terrorist plot and its tragic consequences for the guilty and innocent alike.Introduction by Paul Theroux
language: English
title: The Secret Agent
titlecomplete: The Secret Agent
characters: Karl Yundt, Stevie, Winnie Verloc, Chief Inspector Heat, Mr. Vladimir, Adolf Verloc, Comrade Alexander Ossipon, the Assistant Commissioner, Sir Ethelred, Michaelis
genres: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, British Literature, Literature, Classics, Novels, 20th Century, Espionage, Crime
ratings_count: 22122
places: London, England
publisher: Oxford University Press