Joseph Conrad

The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad

Verloc is a secret agent. He is also a businessman who owns a shop which sells pornographic material, contraceptives, and bric-a-brac. He lives with his wife Winnie, his mother-in-law, and his brother-in-law, Stevie. Stevie has a mental disability, possibly autism, which causes him to be very excitable; his sister, Verloc's wife, attends to him, treating him more as a son than as a brother. Verloc's friends are a group of anarchists of which Comrade Ossipon, Michaelis, and "The Professor" are the most prominent. Although largely ineffectual as terrorists, their actions are known to the police. The group produce anarchist literature in the form of pamphlets entitled F. P., an acronym for The Future of the Proletariat. Verloc is in contact with Mr. Vladimir, the new First Secretary in the embassy of a foreign country. Vladimir informs Verloc that from reviewing his service history he is far from an exemplary model of a secret agent and, to redeem himself, must carry out an operation - the destruction of Greenwich Observatory by a bomb explosion...