# The Secret Agent

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/joseph-conrad/the-secret-agent/9780141199559

![The Secret Agent](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin-classics/joseph-conrad/the-secret-agent_978-01-4119-955-9.jpg?v=2026-04-23%2013%3A35%3A31)

- Book: [The Secret Agent](https://www.bookquiver.com/joseph-conrad/the-secret-agent) ([The Secret Agent.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/joseph-conrad/the-secret-agent.md))
- Authors: [Joseph Conrad](https://www.bookquiver.com/joseph-conrad)
- Publisher: penguin_classics
- ISBN: 978-01-4119-955-9
- Pages: 288
- Published: 2012-07-26
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

'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.