The Secret Agent: A
Simple Tale is a novel by Joseph Conrad, published in 1907. The story
is set in London in 1886 and deals with Mr. Adolf Verloc and his work
as a spy for an unnamed country (presumably Russia). The Secret Agent
is notable for being one of Conrad's later political novels in which
he moved away from his former tales of seafaring.
The novel deals
broadly with anarchism, espionage and terrorism. It also deals with
exploitation of the vulnerable, particularly in Verloc's relationship
with his brother-in-law Stevie, who has an intellectual disability.
The Secret Agent was
ranked the 46th best novel of the 20th century by Modern Library.
Because of its
terrorism theme, it was noted as "one of the three works of
literature most cited in the American media" two weeks after the
September 11 attacks.
Plot
The novel is set in
London in 1886 and follows the life of Mr. Verloc, a secret agent.
Verloc is also a businessman who owns a shop which sells pornographic
material, contraceptives, and bric-a-brac. He lives with his wife
Winnie, his mother-in-law, and his brother-in-law, Stevie. Stevie has
a mental disability, possibly autism,[5] which causes him to be very
excitable; his sister, Verloc's wife, attends to him, treating him
more as a son than as a brother. Verloc's friends are a group of
anarchists of which Comrade Ossipon, Michaelis, and "The
Professor" are the most prominent. Although largely ineffectual
as terrorists, their actions are known to the police. The group
produce anarchist literature in the form of pamphlets entitled F.P.,
an acronym for The Future of the Proletariat.
The novel begins in
Verloc's home, as he and his wife discuss the trivialities of
everyday life, which introduces the reader to Verloc's family. Soon
after, Verloc leaves to meet Mr. Vladimir, the new First Secretary in
the embassy of a foreign country. Although a member of an anarchist
cell, Verloc is also secretly employed by the Embassy as an agent
provocateur. Vladimir informs Verloc that from reviewing his service
history he is far from an exemplary model of a secret agent and, to
redeem himself, must carry out an operation – the destruction of
Greenwich Observatory by a bomb explosion. Vladimir explains that
Britain's lax attitude to anarchism endangers his own country, and he
reasons that an attack on 'science', which he claims is the current
vogue amongst the public, will provide the necessary outrage for
suppression. Verloc later meets with his friends, who discuss
politics and law, and the notion of a communist revolution.
Unbeknownst to the group, Stevie, Verloc's brother-in-law, overhears
the conversation, which greatly disturbs him.
The novel flashes
forward to after the bombing has taken place. Comrade Ossipon meets
The Professor, who discusses having given explosives to Verloc. The
Professor then describes the nature of the bomb which he carries in
his coat at all times: it allows him to press a button which will
blow him up in twenty seconds, and those nearest to him. After The
Professor leaves the meeting, he stumbles into Chief Inspector Heat.
Heat is a policeman who is working on the case regarding a recent
explosion at Greenwich, where one man was killed. Heat informs The
Professor that he is not a suspect in the case, but that he is being
monitored due to his terrorist inclinations and anarchist background.
Knowing that Michaelis has recently moved to the countryside to write
a book, the Chief Inspector informs the Assistant Commissioner that
he has a contact, Verloc, who may be able to assist in the case. The
Assistant Commissioner shares some of the same high society
acquaintances with Michaelis and is chiefly motivated by finding the
extent of Michaelis's involvement in order to assess any possible
embarrassment to his connections. He later speaks to his superior,
Sir Ethelred, about his intentions to solve the case alone, rather
than rely on the effort of Chief Inspector Heat.
The novel then
flashes back to before the explosion, taking the perspective of
Winnie Verloc and her mother. At home, Mrs. Verloc's mother informs
the family that she wishes to move out of the house. Mrs. Verloc's
mother and Stevie use a hansom which is driven by a man with a hook
in the place of his hand. The journey greatly upsets Stevie, as the
driver's tales of hardship coupled with his menacing hook scare him
to the point where Mrs. Verloc must calm him down. On Verloc's return
from a business trip to the continent, his wife tells him of the high
regard that Stevie has for him and she implores her husband to spend
more time with Stevie. Verloc eventually agrees to go for a walk with
Stevie. After this walk, Mrs. Verloc notes that her husband's
relationship with her brother has improved. Verloc then tells his
wife that he has taken Stevie to go and visit Michaelis, and that
Stevie would stay with him in the countryside for a few days.
As Verloc is talking
to his wife about the possibility of emigrating to the continent, he
is paid a visit by the Assistant Commissioner. Shortly thereafter,
Chief Inspector Heat arrives to speak with Verloc, without knowing
that the Assistant Commissioner had left with Verloc earlier that
evening. The Chief Inspector tells Mrs. Verloc that he had recovered
an overcoat at the scene of the bombing which had the shop's address
written on a label. Mrs. Verloc confirms that it was Stevie's
overcoat, and that she had written the address. On Verloc's return,
he realises that his wife knows her brother has been killed by
Verloc's bomb, and confesses what truly happened. A stunned Mrs.
Verloc, in her anguish, then fatally stabs her husband.
After the murder,
Mrs. Verloc flees her home, where she chances upon Comrade Ossipon,
and begs him to help her. Ossipon assists her while confessing
romantic feelings but secretly with a view to possess Mr Verloc's
bank account savings. They plan to run away and he aids her in taking
a boat to the continent. However, her instability and the revelation
of Mr. Verloc's murder increasingly worry him, and he abandons her,
taking Mr Verloc's savings with him. He later discovers in a
newspaper that a woman had disappeared, leaving behind her a wedding
ring, before drowning herself in the English Channel.
Characters
Mr. Adolf
Verloc: a secret agent who owns a shop in the Soho region of London.
His primary characteristic, as described by Conrad, is indolence. He
has been employed by an unnamed embassy to spy on revolutionary
groups, which then orders him to instigate a terrorist act against
the Greenwich Observatory. Their belief is that the resulting public
outrage will force the English government to act more forcibly
against emigre socialist and anarchist activists. He is part of an
anarchist organisation that creates pamphlets under the heading The
Future of the Proletariat. He is married to Winnie, and lives with
his wife, his mother-in-law, and his brother-in-law, Stevie.
Mrs. Winnie
Verloc: Verloc's wife. She cares deeply for her brother Stevie, who
has the mental age of a young child. Of working class origins, her
father was the owner of a pub. She is younger than her husband and
married him not for love but to provide a home for her mother and
brother. A loyal wife, she is deeply disturbed upon learning of the
death of her brother due to her husband's plotting, and kills him
with a knife in the heart. She dies, presumably by drowning herself
to avoid the gallows.
Stevie: Winnie's
brother has the mental age of a young child and is very sensitive and
is disturbed by notions of violence or hardship. His sister cares for
him, and Stevie passes most of his time drawing numerous circles on
pieces of paper. Verloc, exploiting both Stevie's childlike
simplicity and outrage at suffering, employs him to carry out the
terrorist attack on the Greenwich Observatory. However, Stevie
stumbles and the bomb explodes prematurely.
Mrs. Verloc's
mother: Old and infirm, Mrs Verloc's mother leaves the household to
live in an almshouse, believing that two disabled people (herself and
Stevie) are too much for Mr Verloc's generosity. The widow of a
publican, she spent most of her life working hard in her husband's
pub and believed Mr Verloc to be a gentleman because she thought he
resembled patrons of business houses (pubs with higher prices,
consequently frequented by higher classes).
Chief Inspector
Heat: a policeman who is dealing with the explosion at Greenwich. An
astute and practical man who uses a clue found at the scene of the
crime to trace events back to Verloc's home. Although he informs his
superior what he is planning to do with regards to the case, he is
initially not aware that the Assistant Commissioner is acting without
his knowledge. Heat knew Verloc before the bombing as Verloc had
supplied information to Heat through the Embassy. Heat has contempt
for anarchists who he regards as amateurs, as opposed to burglars who
he regards as professionals.
The Assistant
Commissioner: of a higher rank than the Chief Inspector, he uses the
knowledge gained from Heat to pursue matters personally, for reasons
of his own. The Assistant Commissioner is married to a lady with
influential connections. He informs his superior, Sir Ethelred, of
his intentions, and tracks down Verloc before Heat can.
Sir Ethelred: a
Secretary of State (Home Secretary) to whom the Assistant
Commissioner reports. At the time of the bombing he is busy trying to
pass a bill regarding the nationalisation of fisheries through the
House of Commons against great opposition. He is briefed by the
Assistant Commissioner throughout the novel who he often admonishes
to not go into detail.
Mr. Vladimir:
the First Secretary of an embassy of an unnamed country. Though his
name might suggest that this is the Russian embassy, the name of the
previous first secretary, Baron Stott-Wartenheim, is Germanic, as is
that of Privy Councillor Wurmt, another official of this embassy.
There is also the suggestion that Vladimir is not from Europe but
Central Asia.[6] Vladimir thinks that the English police are far too
soft on émigré socialist and anarchists, which are a real problem
in his home country. He orders Verloc to instigate a terrorist act,
hoping that the resulting public outrage will force the English
government to adopt repressive measures.
Michaelis: a
member of Verloc's group, and another anarchist. The most
philosophical member of the group, his theories resemble those of
Peter Kropotkin while some of his other attributes resemble Mikhail
Bakunin.
Comrade
Alexander Ossipon: an ex-medical student, anarchist and member of
Verloc's group. He survives on the savings of various women he
seduces, mostly working class. He is influenced by the theories on
degeneracy of Cesare Lombroso. After Mr Verloc's murder he initially
helps, but afterwards abandons Winnie leaving her penniless on a
train. He is later disturbed when he reads of her suicide and wonders
if he will be able to seduce a woman again.
Karl Yundt: a
member of Verloc's group, commonly referred to as an "old
terrorist".
The Professor:
another anarchist, who specialises in explosives. The Professor
carries a flask of explosives in his coat that can be detonated
within twenty seconds of him squeezing an india rubber ball in his
pocket. The police know this and keep their distance. The most
nihilistic member of the anarchists, the Professor feels oppressed
and disgusted by the rest of humanity and has particular contempt for
the weak. He dreams of a world where the weak are freely exterminated
so that the strong can thrive. He supplies to Mr Verloc the bomb that
kills Stevie.
Greenwich Bombing of
1894
Conrad's character,
Stevie, is based on the French anarchist, Martial Bourdin, who died
gruesomely in Greenwich Park when the explosives he carried
prematurely detonated. Bourdin's motives remain a mystery as does his
intended target, which may have been the Greenwich Observatory. In
the 1920 Author's Note to the novel, Conrad recalls a discussion with
Ford Madox Ford about the bombing:
[...] we
recalled the already old story of the attempt to blow up the
Greenwich Observatory; a blood-stained inanity of so fatuous a kind
that it was impossible to fathom its origin by any reasonable or even
unreasonable process of thought. For perverse unreason has its own
logical processes. But that outrage could not be laid hold of
mentally in any sort of way, so that one remained faced by the fact
of a man blown to bits for nothing even most remotely resembling an
idea, anarchistic or other. As to the outer wall of the Observatory
it did not show as much as the faintest crack. I pointed all this out
to my friend who remained silent for a while and then remarked in his
characteristically casual and omniscient manner: "Oh, that
fellow was half an idiot. His sister committed suicide afterwards."
These were absolutely the only words that passed between us [...].
Terrorism and
anarchism
Terrorism and
anarchism are intrinsic aspects of the novel, and are central to the
plot. Verloc is employed by an agency which requires him to
orchestrate terrorist activities, and several of the characters deal
with terrorism in some way: Verloc's friends are all interested in an
anarchistic political revolution, and the police are investigating
anarchist motives behind the bombing of Greenwich.
The novel was
written at a time when terrorist activity was increasing. There had
been numerous dynamite attacks in both Europe and the US, as well as
several assassinations of heads of state. Conrad also drew upon two
persons specifically: Mikhail Bakunin and Prince Peter Kropotkin.
Conrad used these two men in his "portrayal of the novel's
anarchists". However, according to Conrad's Author's Note, only
one character was a true anarchist: Winnie Verloc. In The Secret
Agent, she is "the only character who performs a serious act of
violence against another", despite the F.P.'s intentions of
radical change, and The Professor's inclination to keep a bomb on his
person.
Critics have
analysed the role of terrorism in the novel. Patrick Reilly calls the
novel "a terrorist text as well as a text about terrorism"
due to Conrad's manipulation of chronology to allow the reader to
comprehend the outcome of the bombing before the characters, thereby
corrupting the traditional conception of time. The morality which is
implicit in these acts of terrorism has also been explored: is Verloc
evil because his negligence leads to the death of his brother-in-law?
Although Winnie evidently thinks so, the issue is not clear, as
Verloc attempted to carry out the act with no fatalities, and as
simply as possible to retain his job, and care for his family.
Politics
The role of politics
is paramount in the novel, as the main character, Verloc, works for a
quasi-political organisation. The role of politics is seen in several
places in the novel: in the revolutionary ideas of the F.P.; in the
characters' personal beliefs; and in Verloc's own private life.
Conrad's depiction of anarchism has an "enduring political
relevance", although the focus is now largely concerned with the
terrorist aspects that this entails. The discussions of the F.P. are
expositions on the role of anarchism and its relation to contemporary
life. The threat of these thoughts is evident, as Chief Inspector
Heat knows F.P. members because of their anarchist views. Moreover,
Michaelis' actions are monitored by the police to such an extent that
he must notify the police station that he is moving to the country.
The plot to destroy
Greenwich is in itself anarchistic. Vladimir asserts that the bombing
"must be purely destructive" and that the anarchists who
will be implicated as the architects of the explosion "should
make it clear that [they] are perfectly determined to make a clean
sweep of the whole social creation." However, the political form
of anarchism is ultimately controlled in the novel: the only supposed
politically motivated act is orchestrated by a secret government
agency.
Some critics, such
as Fredrick R. Karl, think that the main political phenomenon in this
novel is the modern age, as symbolised by the teeming, pullulating
foggy streets of London (most notably in the cab ride taken by Winnie
and Stevie Verloc). This modern age distorts everything, including
politics (Verloc is motivated by the need to keep his remunerative
position, the Professor to some extent by pride), the family
(symbolised by the Verloc household, in which all roles are
distorted, with the husband being like a father to the wife, who is
like a mother to her brother), even the human body (Michaelis and
Verloc are hugely obese, while the Professor and Yundt are
preternaturally thin). This extended metaphor, using London as a
center of darkness much like Kurtz's headquarters in Heart of
Darkness, presents "a dark vision of moral and spiritual
inertia" and a condemnation of those who, like Mrs Verloc, think
it a mistake to think too deeply.
Literary
significance and reception
Initially, the novel
fared poorly in both the United Kingdom and the United States,
selling only 3,076 copies between 1907 and 1914. The book fared
slightly better in Britain, yet no more than 6,500 copies were
pressed before 1914. Although sales increased after 1914, the novel
never sold more than "modestly" throughout Conrad's
lifetime. The novel was released to favourable reviews, with most
agreeing with the view of The Times Literary Supplement, that the
novel "increase[d] Mr. Conrad's reputation, already of the
highest." However, there were detractors, who largely disagreed
with the novel's "unpleasant characters and subject".
Country Life magazine called the story "indecent", whilst
also criticising Conrad's "often dense and elliptical style".
In modern times, The
Secret Agent is considered to be one of Conrad's finest novels. The
Independent calls it "[o]ne of Conrad's great city novels"
whilst The New York Times insists that it is "the most brilliant
novelistic study of terrorism". It is considered to be a
"prescient" view of the 20th century, foretelling the rise
of terrorism, anarchism, and the augmentation of secret societies,
such as MI5. The novel is on reading lists for both secondary school
pupils and university undergraduates.
Influence on Ted
Kaczynski
The Secret Agent is
said to have influenced the Unabomber—Ted Kaczynski. Kaczynski was
a great fan of the novel and as an adolescent kept a copy at his
bedside. He identified strongly with the character of "the
Professor" and advised his family to read The Secret Agent to
understand the character with whom he felt such an affinity. David
Foster, the literary attributionist who assisted the FBI, said that
Kaczynski "seem[ed] to have felt that his family could not
understand him without reading Conrad."
Kaczynski's
idolisation of the character was due to the traits that they shared:
disaffection, hostility toward the world, and being an aspiring
anarchist. However, it did not stop at mere idolisation. Kaczynski
used "The Professor" as a source of inspiration, and
"fabricated sixteen exploding packages that detonated in various
locations". After his capture, Kaczynski revealed to FBI agents
that he had read the novel a dozen times, and had sometimes used
"Conrad" as an alias. It was discovered that Kaczynski had
used various formulations of Conrad's name – Conrad, Konrad, and
Korzeniowski, Conrad's original surname – to sign himself into
several hotels in Sacramento. As in his youth, Kaczynski retained a
copy of The Secret Agent, and kept it with him whilst living as a
recluse in a hut in Montana.
Adaptations
In 1923 Conrad
adapted the novel as a three-act drama of the same title.
The novel formed
the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's 1936 film, Sabotage, though many
changes to the plot and characters were made. (Another 1936 Hitchcock
film, Secret Agent, was based on short stories by W. Somerset
Maugham.)
A television
adaptation of The Secret Agent was made in 1992, a three part BBC
miniseries, with David Suchet as Verloc, and Cheryl Campbell as his
wife Winnie. Verloc was transformed into a much more sympathetic
character for this work, in which he deeply grieved for Stevie's
death.
A 1996 film The
Secret Agent, more faithful to the original novel, starred Bob
Hoskins, Patricia Arquette and Gérard Depardieu.
On 23 May 2006
the Feldkirch Festival premiered an opera based on the novel. Simon
Wills wrote the music and libretto and Peter Kajlinger sang the main
character, Mr.Verloc.
David Napthine
dramatised a radio adaptation for BBC Radio 4 in 2006, starring Ron
Cook and Robert Glenister.
A play
adaptation of the novel was produced in 2007 by Alexander Gelman, the
Artistic Director of Organic Theater Company in Chicago, IL. The
play's premiere took place on 18 April 2008.
In January 2008,
the play was staged in Italian by the Teatro Stabile di Genova of
Genoa, under the direction of Marco Sciaccaluga.
The Center for
Contemporary Opera in New York presented the world premiere of a new
opera by Michael Dellaira (music) and J D McClatchy (libretto), at
the Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College on 18 March 2011. Amy Burton
sang Winnie, Scott Bearden sang Verloc. It had its European premiere
at the Armel International Opera Festival on 14 October 2011 in
Szeged, Hungary, where the opera was broadcast live on the Arte
Channel, and named the festival's "Laureat." Adrienn Miksch
sang Winnie, Nicolas Rigas sang Verloc. The same production was
reprised on 18 April 2012 at L'Opéra-Théâtre d'Avignon in Avignon,
France. All productions were directed by Sam Helfrich and conducted
by Sara Jobin.
The Capitol City
Opera Company of Atlanta presented the world premiere of The Secret
Agent, an opera in two acts with music by Curtis Bryant and libretto
by Allen Reichman at the Conant Center for Performing Arts at
Oglethorpe University on 15 March 2013. Directed by Michael Nutter,
the production featured soprano Elizabeth Claxton in the role of
Winnie, baritone Wade Thomas as Verloc and tenor Timothy Miller as
Ossipon. In this operatic treatment, originally completed in 2007
under the title The Anarchist, Winnie, discovering that she has been
abandoned on the train, sings a final aria "Fooled Again."
Bryant quotes one measure from Puccini's Tosca before Winnie leaps
into the path of an oncoming train, ending her life and the opera.
In 2014, the BBC
ordered a three-part television series based on the novel.[32] It was
filmed from October-December 2015 and will air in July 2016.[
Toby Jones, Vicky McClure and Stephen Graham will star.
The
Secret Agent: a timely BBC adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novel
As Conrad’s
1907 novel screens, Mark Lawson hails a prescient masterpiece that
has shaped depictions of terrorism and espionage
Mark Lawson
Saturday 16 July
2016 12.00 BST
As they watch a
suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his chest walk through a
London that feels on the brink of political collapse, some viewers
may suspect that the new TV adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel,
The Secret Agent, has been tweaked to maximise contemporary
relevance.
Those elements,
though, are in the original, making the BBC1 three-parter – with
Toby Jones as Verloc, an anarchist who becomes involved in a plot to
blow up Greenwich Observatory – the latest example of Conrad’s
story becoming a prism through which modern political insecurities
are viewed. It is a tactic that goes back to 1936, when Alfred
Hitchcock filmed the story, under the title Sabotage, as a reflection
of the developing political pressures in Europe.
Ever since, the
years that sees an adaptation of The Secret Agent is unlikely to have
been a good one for democracy. The BBC put the book on the screen
twice in quick succession, in 1967 and 1975, straddling an era of
international instability, marked by the rise of sectarian violence
in Northern Ireland, student riots in France and assassinations in
the US. There had even been, in the early 70s, a period of actual
anarchist terrorism in England, with bombings carried out by the
Angry Brigade.
When the BBC again
filmed the novel in 1992, with David Suchet as Verloc, The Secret
Agent again felt uncannily suited to a period of legislative turmoil
and fear of terrorism: four years previously Pan Am flight 103 had
exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland in a bombing attributed to Libya,
and the series aired during a spell in which governments were
tumbling around the world, including those of Margaret Thatcher and
the first President Bush, who had been undermined by a populist drive
against the political establishment led by a billionaire political
outsider, Ross Perot.
David Suchet as
Verloc and Peter Capaldi as Vladimir in the 1992 BBC adaptation.
Photograph: BBC
The strong resonance
of the novel in that epoch is shown by the fact that a movie version,
written and directed by Christopher Hampton, followed in 1996, its
release coming spookily soon after the apprehension by the FBI, of
Ted Kaczynski, an American domestic anarchist known as the
“Unabomber”. A university professor, like the character in The
Secret Agent with the explosive coat, Kaczynski had used the
pseudonym “Conrad”, and appears to have been an admirer of the
novel.
Although no new
screen version followed the 9/11 attacks, the book was regularly
referenced in journalistic commentary on the atrocities. So, given
this history, it is little surprise that The Secret Agent should turn
up on British television in 2016, soon after terrorist attacks in
France and Belgium, and in a summer when Donald Trump has become the
most successful non-mainstream presidential candidate since Perot.
Conrad’s book
still seems to be the fiction that best expresses western society’s
concerns about terrorism and popular revolution. And, looking at the
fictions on these subjects that have appeared in the subsequent 109
years, the story of Verloc has also influenced each intermittent wave
of novels about terrorism, as writers responded to the threats from
the IRA, Palestinian terror groups, al-Qaida and now Islamic State.
The fuse on this
line of writing was lit in the first decade of the 20th century not
only by The Secret Agent but by another novel about anarchists that
appeared one year later in 1908: The Man Who Was Thursday by GK
Chesterton. Although Conrad’s Verloc inhabited an earlier London –
the Greenwich bomb plot takes place in 1886, inspired by a real
incident of that time – the books draw on the same subculture of
political dissent. In Chesterton’s work, a squad of anti-anarchist
police attempts to infiltrate the European Council of Anarchism,
whose members maintain anonymity, in a strategy similar to the use of
colour-coded aliases by the robbers in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs,
by each taking the name of a day of the week.
Another overlap
between The Secret Agent and The Man Who Was Thursday is a contrast
between the implications of the stories and the tone in which they
are told, a distance signalled by subtitles. Conrad calls his novel
“A Simple Tale”, and adopts a satirical and moralising attitude
towards his characters: Verloc runs a Soho sex shop, while the
anarchists with whom he consorts include one whose diet consists only
of raw carrots. Categorised by Chesterton as “A Nightmare”, The
Man Who Was Thursday develops into a farce of subterfuge, in which
almost no one is who they claim to be or not to be. And, if Conrad
saw in anarchism a chance to dramatise the worst aspects of human
behaviour, Chesterton, an optimist and devout Roman Catholic
believer, attempts a moral about the possibility of betterment.
For obvious
historical reasons, the anarchist thriller soon enough gave way in
Britain to the genre of war stories, first written by those who had
served in the 1914-18 conflict, such as AP Herbert’s The Secret
Battle (1919), Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End (1924-28) and W
Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden: The British Agent (1928). Veterans of
the second world war subsequently reported back in another wave of
conflict fiction, including Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea
(1951) and two American works from the same year: From Here To
Eternity by James Jones and Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny.
Naval war novels,
such as Montsarrat’s and Wouk’s, are inevitably influenced by
Conrad stories based on his career as a merchant seaman (Typhoon,
Heart of Darkness), but The Secret Agent also strongly informs war
literature.
When Alfred
Hitchcock, in 1936, based a film on Maugham’s Ashenden, he gave it
the Conradian title Secret Agent, even though he was almost
simultaneously engaged in the project to turn The Secret Agent into
the film that became Sabotage. But this confusion is illuminating, as
there is a line of inheritance from anarchist to war literature, and,
indeed, beyond that, to the next fictional growth area: espionage.
The leaders in that field, Graham Greene and John le Carré, had
recognisably read Conrad and Maugham.
Trails from The
Secret Agent and espionage novels can then be traced into the next
big burst of fiction about domestic terrorism following the outbreak
of the Irish Troubles. The footprints of anarchist fiction can be
found here too, as the Irish republican leader Michael Collins, a
historical inspiration to the IRA, was a declared admirer of The Man
Who Was Thursday, claiming to have learned from it that the best way
of avoiding being hunted was not to seem to be hiding anything.
Troubles fiction
began as early as 1973, when Jack Higgins (the pen name of Harry
Patterson) published A Prayer for the Dying, in which the
protagonist, Martin Fallon, is a former IRA killer trying to atone
for his past. Higgins has also written a sequence of 21 novels since
Eye of the Storm (1992), featuring Sean Dillon, a former IRA hitman.
The most enduringly
praised Troubles thriller, though, has been Gerald Seymour’s
Harry’s Game (1975), in which a British agent goes undercover to
hunt the republican assassin of a British politician. Seymour had
reported from Belfast for ITN and established the habit of fiction
about Northern Irish terrorism initially being written by outsiders.
The American Paul
Theroux drew on his experience of living in London during the IRA
bombing campaign for The Family Arsenal (1976), based around a
bombing cell in south London. Another literary immigrant, the
Iranian-Rhodesian Doris Lessing, wrote The Good Terrorist (1985), a
novel that seems to hold deliberate echoes of The Secret Agent, as
Alice, a middle-class communist, becomes involved with a cabal of
London anarchists who, inspired by the IRA, transmute into
terrorists. For understandable reasons of getting enough of the
subject at home – and the genuine physical risk to publishers and
writers who were perceived to be taking sides – Northern Irish
writers have only fully tackled the topic in books written since the
establishment of the peace process, by crime writers including Adrian
McKinty, Brian McGilloway and Stuart Neville.
The eruption of
Catholic-Protestant violence in Northern Ireland was paralleled by
increasing Israeli-Arab tension – from the six-day war of 1967 to
the killing of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 and
the Yom Kippur war of 1973 – and there is a porous border between
the literatures of Irish and Middle Eastern terrorism. Seymour
followed Harry’s Game with The Glory Boys (1976), in which an Arab
terrorist teams up with an IRA assassin to attempt to kill an Israeli
scientist who is visiting London. Thomas Harris, later to be fabled
as the creator of Hannibal Lecter, has acknowledged that watching the
Olympics massacre on television inspired him to write the thriller
Black Sunday (1975), in which terrorists from the Palestinian Black
September movement conspire to detonate a TV airship filled with
explosives over the stadium hosting the American football Super Bowl.
Whereas Davidson’s
and Harris’s books favour the Israeli perspective, a general
realignment in western attitudes towards the Middle East was
signalled by Le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl (1983), in which,
extending the moral ambiguity that the writer had brought to his cold
war spy stories, a woman working as a double agent for Israeli and
Palestinian security forces is destroyed by her conflict of
loyalties.
The next swell of
novels about bombers featured the Islamist extremism that began with
al-Qaida and now continues via the various iterations of Isis. What
is striking about this subgenre of terrorism fiction, though, is the
extent to which it anticipated rather than retro-dramatised events.
The concept of the suicide plane bomb had been a pivotal plotline in
The Better Angels, a 1979 thriller by Charles McCarry, which also
featured Ibn Awad, a radical Islamist warlord who seems a shivery
premonition of Osama bin Laden. As McCarry is a former CIA agent,
some aspects of his storytelling may have been informed by agency
wargaming.
Tom Clancy, an
author who had less formal but friendly links with the security
establishment, also spookily previewed 9/11 in Debt of Honour (1994),
in which a 747 is flown deliberately into the Capitol building,
removing most of the United States government. (Read now, Harris’s
Black Sunday also feels prophetic in having imagined, more than a
quarter of a century before it occurred, terrorist mass murder from
the skies.)
Post-9/11, the
threat coming from a state of mind rather than a single nation state
became a common trope in novels, including McCarry’s Old Boys
(2004), in which Ibn Awad reappears, although now seeming not the
conception of Bin Laden but an inflection.
One of Bin Laden’s
favoured weapons was the “clean skin” or “homegrown”
terrorist, radicalised and turned against their own country. This
concept is explored from very different national and literary angles
in At Risk (2005), written by former MI5 boss Stella Rimington; John
Updike’s novel Terrorist (2006); and Chris Cleave’s Incendiary
(2005), which, with grim serendipity, was published on the day of the
7/7 attacks on the London transport system.
As state-of-mind
bombings have graduated to the attempt to impose an Islamic state,
mass attacks on cities have become a narrative commonplace in
fiction: unlikely to sell in large quantities at transport hubs are
Andy McNab’s Red Notice (2012), in which 400 passengers are taken
hostage in the Channel tunnel, and Crisis, in which the UK capital is
threatened with unparalleled massacre, by Frank Gardner, the BBC’s
security correspondent, who is one of the few victims of terrorism
(shot and seriously injured by al-Qaida sympathisers in 2004) to have
written in the genre.
The characters in
these novels will hope that the terrorists they are up against prove
to be as incompetent or eccentric as Conrad’s Verloc and the
suicide-vested professor in the book that started the form.
• The Secret Agent
starts on 17 July on BBC1 at 9pm.
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