Will Self’s provocative introduction and Ben Jones’s perturbing portraits complete the Folio edition of The Secret Agent; Joseph Conrad’s startling terror-attack fiction set in Edwardian London.

Amongst the greatest English-language writers, Conrad dives into the seething heart of a city on the edge of terror. In a novel inspired by a failed London terror attack in 1894, Conrad lays bare the seedy heart of the city’s anarchist element, its human flotsam and jetsam relentlessly derided through his scathing and often comic descriptions.

The shady characters are captured in mesmerising portraits by award-winning illustrator Ben Jones, his work an electrifying hybrid of print-making and graphic drawing that is perfectly suited to Conrad’s Edwardian London. His lifelike portraits stare right through the viewer; the illusion of texture and the stark graphic shapes framing the eerily realistic expressions of the characters. This cast of fanatics and grotesques is further scrutinised by award-winning novelist and essayist Will Self in a newly commissioned introduction which examines the disturbing parallels between Conrad’s setting and today’s world.