The Secret Agent (м) Conrad

Inspired by an actual attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory in 1894--often called the first modern terrorist act--this chillingly prophetic novel is the literary precursor to the espionage thrillers of such writers as Graham Greene and John le Carre. The Secret Agent offers a devastating portrait of late nineteenth-century London, with its fatuous civil servants, amoral politicians and corrupt police, who are mirrored by their counterparts in the criminal underworld. The secret agent of the title is Verloc, a pornographer who has agreed to go undercover as a mole in an anarchist collective. When his handler instructs him to provoke the group into committing an act of violence, in order to mobilize public opinion for a crack-down, his own family ends up destroyed.