The Secret Agent (Modern Library): A Simple Tale (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) - Softcover

Joseph Conrad

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812973054 ISBN 13: 9780812973051

Publisher: Modern Library Inc, 2005

Synopsis

Since 1917 The Modern Library prides itself as The modern Library of the world s Best Books . Its paperback series feature treasured classics, major translations of great works, and rediscoveries of keen literary and historical merit. Featuring introductions by leading writers, stunning translations, scholarly endnotes and reading group guides. Production values emphasize superior quality and readability. Competitive prices, coupled with exciting cover design make these an ideal gift to be cherished by the avid reader. In reexamining The Secret Agent in a post-9/11 world, Robert D. Kaplan praises Joseph Conrad s surgical insight into the mechanics of terrorism, calling the book a fine example of how a savvy novelist may detect the future long before a social scientist does. This intense 1907 thriller a precursor to works by Graham Greene and John le Carré concerns a British double agent who infiltrates a cabal of anarchists. Conrad explores political and criminal intrigue in a modern society, building to a climax that the critic F. R. Leavis deemed one of the most astonishing triumphs of genius in fiction Edited and with Notes by Peter Lancelot Mallios Introduction by Robert D. Kaplan

About this title

Review:

"The Secret Agent is an astonishing book. It is one of the best--and certainly the most significant--detective stories ever written." --Ford Madox Ford

"The Secret Agent is an altogether thrilling 'crime story' . . . a political novel of a foreign embassy intrigue and its tragic human outcome." --Thomas Mann

"One of Conrad's supreme masterpieces." --F. R. Leavis

"[The Secret Agent] was in effect the world's first political thriller--spies, conspirators, wily policemen, murders, bombings . . . Conrad was also giving artistic expression to his domestic anxieties--his overweight wife and problem child, his lack of money, his inactivity, his discomfort in London, his uneasiness in English society, his sense of exile, of being an alien . . . The novel has the perverse logic and derangement of a dream."
--from the Introduction to the Everyman's Library edition by Paul Theroux

Book Description:

'Spookily topical' - Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: Modern Library Inc
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0812973054
• ISBN 13: 9780812973051
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352