
The Secret Agent
1907 · 320 pages
Conrad wrote the first great modern novel of terrorism. Verloc keeps a seedy London shop, informs on anarchists for a foreign embassy, and is ordered to bomb the Greenwich Observatory to frighten England.
★ 6.9

Conrad wrote the first great modern novel of terrorism. Verloc keeps a seedy London shop, informs on anarchists for a foreign embassy, and is ordered to bomb the Greenwich Observatory to frighten England.

The tabloid Bild-Zeitung had branded Böll a terrorist sympathizer, so he answered with this: a quiet housekeeper spends one night with a wanted man and the papers take her honor apart.

Guerrillas storm a vice president's mansion somewhere in South America and hold the room for months. Among the hostages is a soprano who sings each morning, and everyone begins falling in love.