# The Secret Agent

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/joseph-conrad/the-secret-agent/9780141974545

![The Secret Agent](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin/joseph-conrad/the-secret-agent_978-01-4197-454-5.jpg?v=2026-04-24%2003%3A59%3A49)

- 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
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-01-4197-454-5
- Published: 2012-07-26
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: E-book

## Description

With a note by the author. '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.