The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale is a novel by Joseph Conrad published in 1907. It is notable as it is one of Conrad’s later political novels, which move away from his typical tales of seafaring. Because of its terrorist theme, The Secret Agent was noted as "one of the three works of literature mostcited in the American media" around two weeks after 11 September 2001. It was ranked the 46th best novel of the 20th century by Modern Library

In the only novel Conrad set in London, The Secret Agentcommunicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verlac, a Russian spy working for the police, and ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho. His masters instruct him to discredit the anarchists in a humiliating fashion, and when his evil plan goes horribly awry, Verlac must deal with the repercussions of his actions.

Joseph Conrad（3 December 1857 – 3 August 1934) was a Polish author who wrote in English after settling in England.He wrote stories and novels, often with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an indifferent universe. He was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English sensibility into English literature.