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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780812973051
ISBN: 0812973054
Label: Modern Library
Manufacturer: Modern Library
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2004-12-14
Publisher: Modern Library
Product Release Date: 2004-12-14
Studio: Modern Library

Edited and with Notes by Peter Lancelot Mallios
Introduction by Robert D. Kaplan

In reexamining The Secret Agent in a post-9/11 world, Robert D. Kaplan praises Joseph Conrad’s “surgical insight into the mechanics of terrorism,” calling the book “a fine example of how a savvy novelist may detect the future long before a social scientist does.”

This intense 1907 thriller–a precursor to works by Graham Greene and John le Carré–concerns a British double agent who infiltrates a cabal of anarchists. Conrad explores political and criminal intrigue in a modern society, building to a climax that the critic F. R. Leavis deemed “one of the most astonishing triumphs of genius in fiction.”

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: It's OK
Review: The hazards of following a reviewer's suggestions are compounded if you and the reviewer don't share similar tastes. So it was with my purchase of this book based upon an article about classic spy novels I read in the WSJ. It is true that Conrad's book is a classic and it is about a "secret agent", and I wasn't expecting a LeCarre or Fleming sort of read, but I found it plodding and somewhat dull. I was intrigued by the fact that English was not Conrad's first language and by how well he had assimilated the language and culture. I finished the book but it felt like an assignment for school.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Disappointed me
Review: Like reviewer Michael White before me, I found little insight into modern terrorism here and, although Conrad's writing style is always enjoyable, I found the story unsatisfying. The "terrorists" in this story are somewhat humorously portrayed as vain, self-absorbed toothless tigers and it's more a story about one man's personal crisis. I didn't much care for the ending and although I read somewhere about this novel having an amazingly suspenseful climax, I must have missed it because I found it predictable and even slightly boring. I've loved the other Conrads I've read, but cannot really recommend this one.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Great early modernist work in a fine edition
Review: First a comment about this remarkable Modern Library Edition - it has an absurd introduction by Robert Kaplan, which is deliciously skwered in an Afterword by the volume's editor, Peter Mallios. Kaplan reads Conrad's book with all the sophistication one brings to a Tom Clancy novel, claiming to draw insight into how the modern state has to defend itself. In reality, Conrad clearly was condemning the police in the novel for wanting to put an 'enemy of the state' in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

Ignore the media frenzy - don't read this book for insight into 9-11 or Osama bin Laden, because, if you're a serious reader, you really won't find much there. Read this book because it is an excellent early Modernist novel, filled with beautifully crafted language, and themes, forms, and techniques that became key elements of mature Modern literature.

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