Describes a band of frustrated revolutionary exiles in Geneva. This book is a study of individuals under pressure, and it remains a telling account of the fugitive life - especially in its portrait of Razumov, heir to the long line of Russian anti-heroes in Gogol, Dostoyevsky and Turgenev.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, Conrad wrote three political novels that have had constant influence on the way we look at contemporary history. The third of these, Under Western Eyes, is the eternally pertinent story of Russian radicals exiled in Geneva, those who spy on them, and the iron links that chain them to each other and to their motherland.