127
Followers
155
Following
Bettie's Books
A Stuga On the Cusp of the Orust Riviera, tucked away next to a hobbit hole in the woods.
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
bookshelves: winter-20142015, published-1907, film-only, london, britain-england, mystery-thriller, spies
Recommended for: Laura, Wanda et al
Read from January 10 to 12, 2015
Watch hereDescription: Mr Verloc, the secret agent, keeps a shop in London's Soho where he lives with his wife Winnie, her infirm mother, and her idiot brother, Stevie. When Verloc is reluctantly involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory things go disastrously wrong, and what appears to be "a simple tale" proves to involve politicians, policemen, foreign diplomats and London's fashionable society in the darkest and most surprising interrelations.
Based on the text which Conrad's first English readers enjoyed, this new edition includes a full and up-to-date bibliography, a comprehensive chronology and a critical introduction which describes Conrad's great London novel as the realization of a "monstrous town," a place of idiocy, madness, criminality, and butchery. It also discusses contemporary anarchist activity in the UK, imperialism, and Conrad's narrative techniques.
The opening scene is a definition of sabotage:
1. The deliberate destruction of property or obstruction of normal operations, as by civilians or enemy agents in a time of war.
2. The deliberate attempt to damage, destroy, or hinder a cause or activity.
tr.v. sab·o·taged, sab·o·tag·ing, sab·o·tag·es
To damage, destroy, or hinder (something) by sabotage.
7