Product Description
Originally published in 1941, Arthur Koestler's modern masterpiece, Darkness At Noon, is a powerful and haunting portrait of a Communist revolutionary caught in the vicious fray of the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s.

During Stalin's purges, Nicholas Rubashov, an aging revolutionary, is imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the party he has devoted his life to. Under mounting pressure to confess to crimes he did not commit, Rubashov relives a career that embodies the ironies and betrayals of a revolutionary dictatorship that believes it is an instrument of liberation.

A seminal work of twentieth-century literature, Darkness At Noon is a penetrating exploration of the moral danger inherent in a system that is willing to enforce its beliefs by any means necessary.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 18 reviews)

Fiction is rarely as good as reality

I had recently read Gulag Archipelago which I thought was magnificent. As so many reviews recommended this book by Koestler, I decided to read it. It held my attention, but I did not find it eye-opening. And the rather long and convoluted "justifications of bad behavior" put into the mouth of examiner Ivanov I found artificial and tedious. I guess it would be interesting to a sociologist, which Koestler was. It would have been much more interesting to me to read what Koestler experienced himself, at first embracing Communism and later becoming disenchanted with it. This was the course of the main character's beliefs, but then I find that fiction is never as interesting as the true story. I imagine that Koestler didn't see his secretary put to death because of his refusal to admit his own guilt. If he had he certainly would have been able to write a more poignant description of his conflicted emotions.
October 09, 2008

Novel of Ideas

"Darkness at Noon" is one of those books that stays in your mind long after you put it down. I first read it more than 30 years ago when I was a high school student reading "serious" books for the first time. It just knocked me over. It raised questions about personal morality and the ends of politics that made other authors I was reading (such as Ayn Rand) seem incredibly shallow by comparison.

Recently I read the book again to see if it was as good as I remembered. I'm happy to say it's even better. "Darkness at Noon" is the story of an Old Bolshevik who is forced to re-examine his life's work in the communist party when he is caught up in the purge trials of the 1930s. As such, the book is a great analysis of the pathology and twisted logic that corrupted mid-20th century communism. But it is also a broader exploration of ends-justify-means morality, exposing the traps and contradictions we fall into whenever truth and common decency are thrown overboard in the name of social utility. "Darkness at Noon" easily transcends old controversies about communism. Indeed, in an age when the U.S. government has secret torture camps to fight terror, its message has lost none of its power or relevance.

The story is gripping. The writing is superb. The characters are vivid. Dialogues of near-Dostoyevskian intensity alternate with passages of sad introspection and guilty memory. Read it. It may even make you feel 17 again -- and wide open to the impact of great literature. Six stars.

Heck, seven stars....

July 03, 2008

"1984" in 1938

I'm afraid to read anything else by Arthur Koestler.

"Darkness at Noon," his excellent novel about an aging revolutionary awaiting a show-trial and execution in Stalin's Soviet Union, is so thoroughly compelling and readable, alive with ideas and general brilliance, and so widely recognized as Koestler's masterpiece, that I fear his other books will be disappointing by comparison.

This, on the other hand, may well be my favorite book. Ever. Despite the fact that my "to-read" pile is a paper stalagmite that grows faster than I can chip away at it, I ripped through this one twice in under six months, and if I were somehow locked in the bathroom with only this on the toilet tank, and forced to start it a third time--I can't imagine this actually happening, but bear with me here--I can't say I'd be all that disappointed.

This reads like "1984," but it preceded Orwell's book, and presumably greatly influenced it. More importantly, although the real 1984 eventually rolled around to make Orwell's dystopia seem at least somewhat absurd (in execution, if not idea and desire), this still feels incredibly realistic.

And scarily, this is more relevant to today's America. While our level of freedom and political discourse may be completely different than that of Stalin's Soviet Union, the methods they used would not be unfamiliar in Guantanamo or Abu Grahib--or in some police precincts. Not the shrill and scary tactics of "1984," but the soft and simple: psychological games, sleep deprivation, and the like. Sleep deprivation may seem downright kind in the pantheon of torture, and I'm sure it starts off relatively innocuously--"They're terrorists, they're criminals, so why should we coddle them? Why should they get a good night's sleep?"--but any tactic whereby one compels the body to betray the mind is torture. And the sad thing is that torture doesn't work. Forget all the crazy ticking time-bomb scenarios, the fact is simple. Torture. Doesn't. Work. It does not provide reliable information or accurate confessions. And this book shows why. Rubashov, kept up for days on end, becomes willing to say or do anything for a few blessed moments of sleep. He will sell himself out. He will say anything. He will lie.

The strange peculiarity of Soviet Russia is that the victim and the torturers both know these lies are lies. But he says them, and they listen, because they both have their roles to play. The show trial is not really a trial. It is only a show.

But the great thing about "Darkness at Noon" is that it isn't just a polemic about tactics or a lesson about history; it is a powerful meditation on good and evil, and the extent to which we allow the latter in the short term because we believe it will somehow help us get the former in the long term. One reads this and feels sympathy not just for Rubashov, but for his interrogators, because they grapple with a timeless question: can we, and should we, make today difficult and imperfect and unjust for the sake of a better tomorrow?

This is a weighty question, and the book abounds with such meditations: like Dostoyevsky's works--to which it is clearly in debt--it is a philosophical novel with true weight and depth. In "The Grand Inquisitor", one of the most famous chapters in literature, Dostoyevsky concocts a prison scene in which the head of the Spanish Inquisition discourses to Jesus on why the Church felt it necessary to behave in ways contrary to Jesus' teachings. And this book feels like "The Grand Inquisitor" writ large. Though it revolves around ideology instead of religion, the effect is similar--disciples explaining to the master why they needed to stray, why they needed to corrupt and pervert their beliefs in order to save them from external enemies, why they needed to destroy the movement in order to save it.

On this and many other issues, Rubashov ponders but--importantly--does not always come up with clear answers. "How can one change the world if one identifies oneself with everybody?" he muses early on, then asks, "How else can one change it? He who understands and forgives--where would he find a motive to act? Where would he not?" I don't think Koestler wants to give us answers. Like the best artists, he's not so much interested in telling us what to think as he is in making us think. It's not always about finding answers; it's about remembering to ask questions. And that's something we need to remember today.

April 19, 2008

Psychological Examination of Stalinist Show Trials

Set during the Stalinist purges and show trials, `Darkness at Noon' presents a fictionalized account of the interrogation and breaking of a (former) communist leader `Rubashov'. Under Stalin, 'former communists' were limited to those persons about to be executed, already executed, or waiting to be uncovered. As an original Bolshevik, a leader of the 1917 revolution, Rubashov's disillusionment was simply inadmissible to Number One (as Stalin is referred to by Koestler).

Koestler explores the journey of Rubashov from the knock at the door through the final denouement. The reader observes Rubashov, who plays the role of narrator, as he undergoes the psychological change from a determination to resist to nearly total capitulation. Rubashov manages to hold to some crumbs of self-respect, but yields to the logic of the revolution as more important than any individual even when the accusations are complete fabrications.

`Darkness at Noon' is precisely imagined with its details of Rubashov pacing the floor of his small isolation cell, the coded tapping between adjacent cells, and the deprivation of physical comforts that make the subsequent small graces, such as limited outdoor exercise, become precious by comparison. This much of the tale was informed by Rubashov's experiences as a prisoner during the Spanish Civil War. Koestler's examination of the psychological destruction of the prisoner is fascinating, although at times it briefly lapses into stultifying disquisitions on the distorted Stalinist political philosophy.

Koestler himself was a German communist through much of the 1930's before immigrating to Britain, leaving the party and becoming an influential ex-communist. George Orwell's excellent essay about Koestler is readily available on the Internet (google `arthur koestler orwell').

Darkness at Noon was the middle book of an unusual trilogy of loosely related subjects: Gladiators and Arrival and Departure (20th Century Classics). Readers may also wish examine Victor's Serge's The Case of Comrade Tulayev (New York Review Books Classics).

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the era of communism in its Stalinist form or more broadly in the perverse ability of humans to place greater meaning in abstract and abstruse ideology than in the actual lives of other humans.

April 05, 2008

Brilliant, insightful pessimism.

The brilliant and controversial writer Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" may be looked upon as an incisive diatribe against Soviet Communism under Stalin, but it was influenced by Koestler's own experience as a prisoner during the Spanish Civil War. That experience gives Rubashov's incarceration the ring of authenticity and we read about his plight with confidence in it's truth. This veracity is what gives the novel it's strength. You also have the feeling that although it is written in 3rd person narrative, it could have been based on a written diary or journal of an actual prominent victim of the Stalinist purges.

Rubashov is a victim, but not an innocent victim. He was an architect of the repressive regime that has turned to devouring it's creators and enablers. His own ruthlessness and duplicity in support of the Communist ideal has destroyed any sympathy we can have for him, but what Koestler is aiming for is understanding, not sympathy. We can empathize with Rubashov without feeling pity. We are not shown monsters, but people whose morals and ethics are weakened by fear and ambition, and who make critical decisions at the intersection of hopeful idealism and grim reality.

After reading this sobering book, you can almost understand why this great mind (Koestler), who observed first hand, the atrocities perpetrated by regimes under Hitler and Stalin, would take a decidedly dark and pessimistic view of society, especially in it's political concerns, and would turn to metaphysics and parapsychology to find a reason for prospective hope in the human condition.

March 23, 2008

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