Razumov is a loner, studying at the university and working hard. He is interrupted one day by another student, Victor Haldin, who confesses to the assassination of a government official just that day. Razumov realizes he must help Haldin, but he doesn't care about politics, only about the consequences if his involvement gets out.

Despite setting out to help Haldin, when things get complicated Razumov informs on him. Haldin is arrested and executed. (This may sound like a spoiler, but it takes place early in the book and is described on the back cover.)

When I started reading this book, I couldn't remember the story at all. I know I read it in college, but nothing that I was reading stood out to me. I think it's because I was confusing it with The Secret Agent, which is also about anarchists and the coming revolution.

Conrad uses this story to talk a lot about Russians and their psychology and how Westerners can never understand them. He also skips around in the story, going back several months, then jumping back ahead. It's confusing, and I don't think it works.

The story is told as if taken from Razumov's diary. The person telling the story is an English teacher he meets much later in the book.

I'm not sure I would recommend this one. Like I said, the timeline is rather confused. I felt like Conrad had an agenda in writing this book, and it got in the way of the story. I don't think I will read this one again. ( )

Sometimes heavy going but ultimately rewarding this is a story of a young man who got caught up in political events preceding the Russian Revolution, and though he wanted nothing more than to be left alone to live his life, he becomes irrevocably caught up in intrigue and counter intrigue. Terrifying and tragic the tale is as fresh and frightening as an episode of Spooks. ( )

A political novel of great and disturbiing power. ( )

In 1910 Joseph Conrad published a novel about a young man named Razumov. Like so much of Conrad it is well written and full of psychological insight. For the 'hero' of the story takes up with a terrorist, Victor Haldin, and betrays him to the secret police. This act haunts him throughout the rest of the novel and the ramifications of his actions determine to a great extent his fate. Set in St. Petersburg before the fall of the Czar and in Geneva Switzerland where revolutionaries plotted against the Czar, this novel takes you into a world of intrigue that shares the atmosphere of that era. The narrator of the novel is a professor of English living in Geneva who through access to Razumov's diary is able to narrate both the inner thoughts of Razumov while sharing the outer circumstances that he observes. This is a novel that lures the reader with a psychological suspense and does not disappoint. ( )

The real adventure of modernism is in the discourse. Ostensibly the plot of the novel goes like this: (warning: plot spoiler ahead) Razumov, a young student with his heart set on a career in the Russian civil service, is roped into becoming a reluctant revolutionary by Haldin, who takes refuge with Razumov just after the former has assassinated a minister. Razumov betrays Haldin, shopping him to the police. Haldin is arrested and hanged. Razumov is then recruited as a spy for the police and sent on a mission to Geneva to infiltrate the Russian community in exile there who are plotting against the system in Russia. He does so and falls in love with Haldin’ s sister. Tormented by remorse at having betrayed her brother, he writes her a documentary confessional, and then confesses himself to the revolutionary group, who take their revenge by making him deaf. Razumov then falls under a tram and is crippled for life. Broken and deaf, he returns to Russia to live in obscurity.

This plot allows several themes and ideas to be developed. The gap between true self and appearance, and the (mis)interpretation of others’ actions, which is the main Conradian project (c.f. this from Lord Jim : "It is when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp.)"...

Read the full review on The Lectern

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2007/0... ( )