#28 in Spy & espionage
The Secret Agent
- 272
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
- Film 1936 +4
- On screen
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Our view
“The Secret Agent” is a grim novel of ideas disguised as a spy story, set among anarchists and informers in the Soho of 1886. Joseph Conrad follows Adolf Verloc, who spies for an unnamed foreign power, and the way he uses his vulnerable brother-in-law Stevie forms the book’s moral core. Its questions about politics, terrorism and remorse remain pointed, and the anarchist known as the Professor is hard to forget.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale is an anarchist spy fiction novel by Polish–British author Joseph Conrad, first "printed (1905–1906) as eleven installments in Ridgway's" and published in book form on 12 September 1907. The story is set in Soho, London in 1886 and deals with Mr. Adolf Verloc and his work as a spy for an unnamed country. The Secret Agent is one of Conrad's later political novels in which he moved away from his tales of seafaring. The novel is dedicated to H. G. Wells and deals broadly with anarchism, espionage and terrorism. It also deals with exploitation of the vulnerable in Verloc's relationship with his brother-in-law Stevie, who has an intellectual disability. Conrad's gloomy portrait of London depicted in the novel was influenced by Charles Dickens' Bleak House.
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen 5 times — from 1936 to 1996.
- FilmSabotageIMDb
- FilmThe Secret AgentIMDb
- SeriesThe Secret AgentIMDb
- SeriesThe Secret AgentIMDb
- TV filmIMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.1 across 81 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 36% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Spy & espionage average of 7.6. That is how 7.4 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.3 | 28 | 35% |
| Hardcover | 6.4 | 53 | 65% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Secret Agent?
It has 272 pages — shorter than 97% of the ranked books in Spy & espionage.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Spy & espionage — with scores between 7.3 and 8.1, closest to this book.
