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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17102 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
"One of the few books written in this epoch which will survive it."

-- New Statesman (UK)

"It is the sort of novel that transcends ordinary limitations. Written with such dramatic power, with such warmth of feeling, and with such persuasive simplicity that it is as absorbing as melodrama."

-- The New York Times Book Review

"A rare and beautifully executed novel."

-- New York Herald Tribune

"A remarkable book. A grimly fascinating interpretation of the logic of the Russian revolution, indeed of all revolutionary dictatorships, and at the same time a tense and subtly intellectualized drama."

-- The Times Literary Supplement (London)

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Nobody can rule guiltlessly.-- Saint-Just

The cell door slammed behind Rubashov.

He remained leaning against the door for a few seconds, and lit a cigarette. On the bed to his right lay two fairly clean blankets, and the straw mattress looked newly filled. The wash-basin to his left had no plug, but the tap functioned. The can next to it had been freshly disinfected, it did not smell. The walls on both sides were of solid brick, which would stifle the sound of tapping, but where the heating and drain pipe penetrated it, it had been plastered and resounded quite well; besides, the heating pipe itself seemed to be noise-conducting. The window started at eye level; one could see down into the courtyard without having to pull oneself up by the bars. So far everything was in order.

He yawned, took off his coat, rolled it up and put it on the mattress as a pillow. He looked out into the yard. The snow shimmered yellow in the double light of the moon and the electric lanterns. All round the yard, along the walls, a narrow track had been cleared for the daily exercise. Dawn had not yet appeared; the stars still shone clear and frostily, in spite of the lanterns. On the rampart of the outside wall, which lay opposite Rubashov's cell, a soldier with slanted rifle was marching the hundred steps up and down; he stamped at every step as if on parade. From time to time the yellow light of the lanterns flashed on his bayonet.

Rubashov took his shoes off, still standing at the window. He put out his cigarette, laid the stump on the floor at the end of his bedstead, and remained sitting on the mattress for a few minutes. He went back to the window once more. The courtyard was still; the sentry was just turning; above the machine-gun tower he saw a streak of the Milky Way.

Rubashov stretched himself on the bunk and wrapped himself in the top blanket. It was five o'clock and it was unlikely that one had to get up here before seven in the winter. He was very sleepy and, thinking it over, decided that he would hardly be brought up for examination for another three or four days. He took his pince-nez off, laid it on the stone-paved floor next to the cigarette stump, smiled and shut his eyes. He was warmly wrapped up in the blanket, and felt protected; for the first time in months he was not afraid of his dreams.

When a few minutes later the warder tuned the light off from outside, and looked through the spy-hole into his cell, Rubashov, ex-Commissar of the People, slept, his back turned to the wall, with his head on his outstretched left arm, which stuck stiffly out of the bed; only the hand on the end of it hung loosely and twitched in his sleep.

Copyright © 1941 by The Macmillan Company

Copyright renewed © 1968 by Mrs. F. H. K. Henries (Daphne Hardy)

Customer 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.

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....

"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.