COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED: Behind the fac ade of a Soho shop selling dubious
merchandise lives Verloc with his wife Winnie, her mother and her retarded
brother, Stevie. Verloc is an overweight, indolent anarchist who conceals his
political activities, such as they are, under a veneer of domesticity and family
life. According to the First Secretary, Mr Vladimir, Verloc has done little to
earn his money in recent years and it is time for a 'dynamic outrage' to provoke
the middle classes. So Verloc, accepting his duty, plants a bomb at the
Greenwich Observatory. But when the blast has done its work, Verloc finds he has
destroyed a great deal more than the complacency of the bourgeoisie. The Secret
Agent is arguably one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Its
brilliant depiction of a terrorist underworld, its ruthless irony and its black
satire on a morally corrupt society is the culmination of many influences on
Conrad, including that of Dickens and of Dostoyevsky.