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The Secret Agent

Autor Joseph Conrad
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 18 sep 2018
A classic and thrilling tale of espionage and murder, Joseph Conrad’s "The Secret Agent" was first published in 1907. Set in London in 1886, the novel centers around Mr. Adolf Verloc, a spy who owns a small shop and lives with his wife Winnie, her mother and her mentally disabled brother Stevie, above his business. He is also a member of a largely ineffectual anarchist group, whom he meets with regularly to discuss politics and produce anarchist literature. Unknown to his fellow anarchists, Verloc is secretly working for the Embassy of an unnamed country as an "agent provocateur." Verloc is told by his government contact that he and his associates are to bomb the Greenwich Observatory in London in order to make the British see anarchism as a greater threat and work more actively to suppress it. In scenes alternating between both before and after the bombing, the novel follows the police investigation of the bombing and the family drama unfolding in Verloc’s own home, as Stevie’s inadvertent involvement in the bombing comes to light. Considered to be one of Conrad’s best works, as well as a prescient study of modern terrorism, it is also a searing and tragic story of family love and loyalty. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9781420958997
ISBN-10: 1420958992
Pagini: 190
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 11 mm
Greutate: 0.25 kg
Editura: Digireads.com

Notă biografică

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was a Polish-born British novelist widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. After a long career at sea in the British merchant marine, Conrad turned to writing and produced a series of influential novels exploring imperialism, morality, and the complexities of human character. His major works include Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, and Nostromo. Known for his rich prose and psychological insight, Conrad's fiction often examines the darker aspects of human nature and the moral ambiguities of modern life.

Textul de pe ultima copertă

At first, Joseph Conrad did not dare to call this book a novel. He traveled to Montpellier in February 1906 with his small family, telling himself that he was composing a short story, entitled 'Verloc', the name of the central character. As always, he wrote slowly, in a stubborn mood of exasperation an uncertainty, laboring in a foreign language.

Descriere

Descriere de la o altă ediție sau format:
'Madness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I'll move the world' In the only novel Conrad set in London, The Secret Agent communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verloc, a Russian spy working for the police, and ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho. His masters instruct him to discredit the anarchists in a humiliating fashion, and when his evil plan goes horribly awry, Verlac must deal with the repercussions of his actions. The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction written in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels, to the beginning of the First World War.

Recenzii

The Secret Agent is set in the seedy world of Adolf Verloc, a storekeeper and double agent in late-Victorian London who pretends to sympathize with a group of international anarchists but reports on their activities to both the Russian embassy and the British government. As he is drawn further into a terrorist bombing plot, his family also becomes involved, with devastating consequences. Based on a real-life failed anarchist plot, The Secret Agent is both intimately engaged with its historical moment and profoundly relevant today.
This new Broadview Edition helps to recreate the historical context that informed Conrad’s preoccupations with global terrorism, human degeneration, the relativity of time, and the position of women.

“Tanya Agathocleous’s edition of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, a tale of espionage in the age of ennui, is an excellent, important, and timely addition to the Broadview list. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the novel uncannily speaks to a range of concerns that continue to preoccupy us—metropolitanism and cosmopolitanism, political terror, degeneracy and the “ends” of history, the collapse of boundaries between domestic and public life, the State’s intrusion into the lives of its citizens—issues that insist on a deep and careful understanding of their historical antecedents. Professor Agathocleous has judiciously selected materials from Conrad’s moment that will effectively immerse students in the social, political, and intellectual milieu of Conrad’s novel.” — Joseph McLaughlin, Ohio University
“An outstanding edition. First-time readers will welcome the eloquent introductory essay, which places The Secret Agent in the context of both Victorianism and modernism, as well as the very useful supplementary materials on anarchism and degeneration. And those already familiar with the novel will be prompted to re-read it in light of Agathocleous’s claim that Conrad, along with his New Woman contemporaries, is exploring marriage and the condition of women as well.” — Amanda Claybaugh, Columbia University

Cuprins

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Joseph Conrad: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
Author’s Note
The Secret Agent
Appendix A: London
  1. From Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1853)
  2. From Ford Madox Hueffer, The Soul of LondonA Survey of a Modern City (1905)
Appendix B: Anarchism and Terrorism
  1. From The Times (16 February 1894)
  2. From Isabel Meredith, A Girl Among the Anarchists (1903)
  3. From Joseph Conrad, a letter to R.B. Cunninghame Graham (20 December 1897)
  4. From Joseph Conrad, a letter to R.B. Cunninghame Graham (7 October 1907)
  5. From Peter Kropotkin, “Anarchism,” Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910)
  6. Peter Kropotkin, “The Scientific Bases of Anarchy” (1887)
  7. From Report of the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration (1903)
  8. From The Saturday Review (9 June 1906)
Appendix C: Degeneration
  1. From Charles Darwin, Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal (1872)
  2. From E. Ray Lankester, Degeneration: A Chapter in Darwinism (1880)
  3. From Cesare Lombroso, “Illustrative Studies in Criminal Anthropology: The Physiognomy of the Anarchists” (1890)
  4. From Max Nordau, Degeneration (1892)
Appendix D: Heat Death, Entropy, and Time
  1. From William Thomson, “On a Universal Tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy” (1852)
  2. From William Thomson, “On the Age of the Sun’s Heat” (1862)
  3. From Algernon Charles Swinburne, “The Garden of Proserpine” (1866)
  4. From Balfour Stewart and J. Norman Lockyer, “The Sun as a Type of the Material Universe” (1868)
Appendix E: Marriage and Feminism
  1. From Coventry Patmore, “The Angel in the House” (1863)
  2. From John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies (1865)
  3. From Mona Caird, “Marriage” (1888)
  4. From Sarah Grand, “The New Aspect of the Woman Question” (1894)
  5. From Hugh E.M. Stutfield, “The Psychology of Feminism” (1897)
Appendix F: Contemporary Reviews
  1. Country Life (21 September 1907)
  2. E.V. Lucas, Times Literary Supplement (20 September 1907)
  3. New York Times Book Review (21 September 1907)
  4. Edward Garnett, The Nation (26 September 1907)
  5. William Morton Payne, The Dial (16 October 1907)
  6. Glasgow News (3 October 1907)
  7. John Galsworthy, Fortnightly Review (1 April 1908)
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