Under Western Eyes

Bomb-throwing assassins, political repression and revolt, emigre revolutionaries infiltrated by a government spy: much of Under Western Eyes is more topical than we would wish. Set in Czarist Russia and in Geneva, and told through the Western eyes of Conrad's English narrator, we are given a somber but not entirely pessimistic view of the human dilemmas which are born of oppression and violence. It is by common critical consent, one of Conrad's finest novels.