Verloc doesn't want to do it, but when Mr Vladimir threatens his cushy life, he becomes very anxious and agrees to the plan… You can listen online to free English audiobook “The Secret Agent” by Joseph Conrad on our website. Vladimir orders Verloc to make sure that a bomb is planted at the Greenwich Observatory. Soon after, Verloc leaves to meet Mr Vladimir, the new First Secretary in the embassy of a foreign country. The novel begins in Verloc's home, as he and his wife discuss the trivialities of everyday life, which introduces the reader to Verloc's family. He lives with his wife Winnie, his mother-in-law, and his brother-in-law, Stevie. In the novel, Verloc is a secret agent and a businessman who owns a shop which sells pornographic material, contraceptives and bric-a-brac. Because of its terrorism theme, it was noted as 'one of the three works of literature most cited in the American media' two weeks after the September 11 attacks. The Secret Agent deals broadly with anarchism, espionage and terrorism. The Secret Agent is a novel by British-Polish writer Joseph Conrad, first published in 1907. He is the novelist of man in extreme situations. Conrad’s influence on later novelists has been profound both because of his masterly technical innovations and because of the vision of humanity expressed through them. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced numerous authors, and many films have been adapted from his works. In the Polish People's Republic, translations of Conrad's works were openly published, except for Under Western Eyes. Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British writer.

The secret agent novel