Conrad, Joseph

New York. 1987. September 1987. Signet/New American Library. 1st Printing of This Signet Classic Edition. Very Good in Slightly Worn Wrappers. 0451521145. Introduction By Alfred Kazin. 266 pages. paperback. CE2114. keywords: Signet Classic Paperback Literature England 20th Century. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Carrying a dramatic intensity beyond that even of his masterpiece, HEART OF DARKNESS, UNDER WESTERN EYES is Conrad's third and last major novel of political treachery and oppression. Along with THE SECRET AGENT and NOSTROMO, it presages the espionage thrillers of John Le Carre and Graham Greene with its spies and counterspies, brooding atmosphere of suspense, and riveting portrayal of betrayal, guilt, and intrigue. For Conrad himself it was a work of wrenching emotionality that took him to the edge of mental breakdown. The novel begins with a bomb that explodes to assassinate a hated Russian minister of police - and kill a number of innocent bystanders as well. The young student who first hides the perpetrator, then betrays him and becomes a spy among his exiled comrades, is Razumov, who in one irrevocable moment becomes entangled in a moral dilemma from which there is no escape. Conrad professed that he intended to render 'the psychology of Russia', a country being driven by a Czarist despotism into anarchy by revolutionaries 'unable to see that all they can effect is merely a name of names'. What he created in this masterwork published six years before the Russian Revolution was a chillingly accurate portrayal of the future - and of the terrorists who, acting in the name of liberty, still haunt our times. inventory #31459 ISBN: 0451521145.