The Secret Agent (Annotated)

Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907) is a bleakly ironic study of espionage, anarchism, and domestic ruin in late-Victorian London. Centered on Adolf Verloc, a double agent entangled with foreign diplomats, police surveillance, and revolutionary circles, the novel transforms the political thriller into a psychological and moral inquiry. Its prose is dense, oblique, and sardonic, aligning modern...