A masterwork of early 20th-century espionage fiction, *The Secret Agent* follows Adolf Verloc, a lazy, easy-going Soho shopkeeper who secretly works as a spy for an unnamed foreign embassy in London. When his handler pressures him to stage a terrorist bombing at the Greenwich Observatory to provoke public outrage against anarchists, Verloc's quiet domestic life unravels, dragging his wife Winnie, her mentally disabled brother Stevie, and a circle of eccentric revolutionaries into a tragedy of mistaken motives, family loyalty, and absurd political violence. Set in foggy, gas-lit Victorian London, Conrad's timeless thriller explores corruption, fanaticism, and the quiet violence lurking beneath respectable middle-class life.
