Kirylo Sidorovitch Razumov is a student in St. Petersburg, applying himself to his studies and harboring ambitions of rising in Russian society. But his plans are shattered when a fellow student, Victor Haldin, assassinates a high-ranking Russian minister before turning to Razumov for help. Razumov is deeply conflicted, but in the moment acts to preserve his own self-interest rather than assist his friend.
Haldin had spoken to Razumov of his mother and sister, living in Geneva. As Razumov is recruited to spy for the Czarist government, he makes his way to Switzerland and meets Mrs. Haldin and the sister, Natalia. The women have been deeply affected by the loss of their son and brother, and Razumov's presence in Geneva deepens their distress. Ultimately, Razumov himself must come to terms with his choices.
The narrator in the novel is an Anglo-Russian language teacher, an older man who has been tutoring Natalia Haldin in English literature. His telling of the story draws both on his own eyewitness experience, and on Razumov's journal which has come into his possession.
Joseph Conrad's 1920 preface to this work acknowledges its contemporary unpopularity. Subsequently, however, it has been widely acclaimed as perhaps his finest political novel, sharing something of the prescience shown in The Secret Agent, written four years earlier.
Conrad's exploration of stability and revolution, loyalty and betrayal, action and abstention, love and indifference, are all deepened by these unsettling techniques, demanding that the reader engage actively in the unfolding of this political and personal drama.
Perfect for readers who appreciate Conrad's masterful psychological depth and political intrigue, this gripping tale of moral conflict and betrayal explores the devastating cost of revolutionary idealism. With its richly atmospheric portrayal of early 20th-century Russia and Switzerland, this classic novel delivers both philosophical complexity and edge-of-your-seat tension that will keep you questioning the nature of loyalty, conscience, and survival until the very last page.
The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)