Terrorism in Conrad’s The Secret Agent*

The Secret Agent, published in 1907, is a detective novel by Joseph Conrad, the well-known Polish-English novelist, and it is classified as one of Conrad’s political novels, together with Nostromo insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(1905); and Under Western Eyes insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(1911);. The Secret Agent, particularly because of its theme of terrorism and the violence it depicts, has become famous again in the US after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and after the recent suicide bombings that have occurred in Europe. The novel describes the period of the fear of the dynamite-throwing anarchist that disturbed the European society from the 1880s through the early part of the twentieth century.