BOOK SUMMARY OF THE SECRET AGENT
"The Secret Agent is one of Conrad's two supreme masterpieces, one of the two
questionable classics of the first order that he added to the English novel, and
in its own way, it is like Nostromo in the subtle and triumphant complexity of
its art" – F.R. Leavis.
An actual attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 is taken by
Conrad as the basis of the central action in the novel. Verloc, who is secretly
working for the police and a foreign power' (Russia) while ostensibly a member
of an anarchist group in Soho, is required