{"product_id":"9780141182629-secondhand-the-secret-agent-a-simple-tale","title":"The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSecondhand book: generally 'Very Good' to 'Excellent'. These are books which may have some slight wear and tear or sun fading on the edges. There may be an inscription at the front. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the fog-shrouded streets of Victorian London, a man leads a double life — ostensibly running a seedy shop in Soho, but covertly serving as an agent for a foreign embassy, surrounded by a cast of anarchists, provocateurs, and criminals. The Secret Agent chronicles the catastrophic chain of events that unfolds when Mr. Verloc is pressured by his handlers to commit an act of terrorism against the Greenwich Observatory, a mission that draws his unsuspecting family into the darkest depths of political intrigue. Joseph Conrad constructs a narrative of chilling irony, exposing the moral bankruptcy beneath the surface of both radical politics and bourgeois respectability with devastating precision.\n\nConrad's masterwork stands as one of the earliest and most penetrating novels of terrorism and espionage in the Western literary canon, anticipating the modern political thriller by half a century. His prose is dense with irony and grim psychological insight, dissecting the absurdity of ideological fanaticism and the indifference of institutions with equal contempt. This Penguin edition, edited with an introduction and notes by Martin Seymour-Smith, offers readers the scholarly apparatus to fully appreciate the novel's rich historical and literary context. Those who begin The Secret Agent will find themselves unable to look away from its portrait of a world in which innocence is the first casualty of political ambition.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49130713186523,"sku":"9780141182629-SECONDHAND","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/1404475d-b58f-4669-bf91-21cf773a4bb4.png?v=1786589040","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/9780141182629-secondhand-the-secret-agent-a-simple-tale","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}