The Secret Agent

Conrad's 1907 novel about Adolf Verloc, a grubby shopkeeper, and his efforts to satisfy the terrorist paymasters who demand that he blow up the Greenwich Observatory has been called the most ironic novel in English. These verbal and dramatic ironies extend to the picture of Verloc's homelife, which comes across as pitilessly as that of the London society in which anarchists, police, subversives and politicians plot and counterplot. David Threlfall navigates Conrad's rich, long sentences with no loss of clarity or emphasis. Threlfall's soft, sometimes whispery, cadences suit beautifully the wry, confidential tone of the text. His sharp characterizations balance this understated narration with some colorful people, especially the jaded Assistant Commissioner and Stevie, Verloc's kind-hearted but simple-minded young brother-in-law. Conrad's masterpiece benefits from Threlfall's intelligent, careful work: It's exciting to hear a performance so perfectly matched to a text. G.H. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Thoroughly ironic and even sarcastic, this early, atypical Conrad novel is an ultimately tragic, comedy of errors spy story, which challenges the oral interpreter to set the right tone. Lean too heavily on the Dickensian caricatures and the tale seems a tastelessly cruel joke. Go too far the other way and you miss the point, as well as the humor. Geoffrey Howard gallops through the narrative without trying though he fittingly gets caught up in the excellent prose. However, the recording still misses something essential in the book's personality. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine