The Secret Agent - Conrad, Joseph

. .

Résumé :
Conrad's 'monstrous town' is London, and his story of espionage and counter-espionage, anarchists and embassies, is a detective story that becomes the story of Winnie Verloc's tenacity in maintaining her devotion to her peculiar and simple-minded brother, Stevie, as they pursue their very ordinary lives above a rather dubious shop in the back streets of Soho. However, far from offering any sentimental picture, The Secret Agent is Conrad's funniest novel. Its savagely witty picture of human absurdity and misunderstanding is written in an ironic style that provokes laughter and unease at the same time, and that continues to provide one of the most disturbing visions of aspiration and futility in twentieth century literature....

Biographie:
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is considered as one of the best authors in the English language, despite the fact that he did not speak English effectively until his twenties. He became known as a master prose stylist who introduced a non-English sensibility into English literature. He authored novels and novellas, many of which take place at sea, about crises of human identity in what he perceived as an indifferent, incomprehensible, and amoral world. Conrad is regarded as a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, while his works also incorporate elements of nineteenth-century realism. His storytelling style and anti-heroic characters, such as Lord Jim, impacted a number of authors. Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew on his native Poland's national experiences-during nearly all of his life, parcelled out among three occupying empires-as well as his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world, including imperialism and colonialism, and that profoundly explore the human psyche. Apollo took his kid to the Austrian-controlled region of Poland in December 1867, which had enjoyed significant internal freedom and self-government for the previous two years. After seeing Lwow and numerous smaller towns, they relocated to Krakow (Poland's capital until 1596), which is also in Austrian Poland, on February 20, 1869....

Sommaire:
..