Mr Verloc, the secret agent, is involved in an anarchist plot to blow up the Greenwich Observatory which goes disastrously wrong. Based on the text which Conrad's first English readers enjoyed, this new edition includes 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.
Inspired by an actual attempt in 1894 to blow up London's Greenwich Observatory, here is a chillingly prophetic examination of contemporary terrorism and the literary precursor to today's espionage thriller. Revised reissue.