272 pages
English language
Published July 24, 2019 by Scribner.
Darkness at Noon (German: Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government that he helped to create. The novel is set in 1939 during the Stalinist Great Purge and Moscow show trials. Despite being based on real events, the novel does not name either Russia or the Soviets, and tends to use generic terms to describe people and organizations: for example the Soviet government is referred to as "the Party" and Nazi Germany is referred to as "the Dictatorship". Joseph Stalin is represented by "Number One", a menacing dictator. The novel expresses the author's disillusionment with the Bolshevik ideology of the Soviet Union at the outset of World War II. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Darkness at Noon number …
Darkness at Noon (German: Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government that he helped to create. The novel is set in 1939 during the Stalinist Great Purge and Moscow show trials. Despite being based on real events, the novel does not name either Russia or the Soviets, and tends to use generic terms to describe people and organizations: for example the Soviet government is referred to as "the Party" and Nazi Germany is referred to as "the Dictatorship". Joseph Stalin is represented by "Number One", a menacing dictator. The novel expresses the author's disillusionment with the Bolshevik ideology of the Soviet Union at the outset of World War II. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Darkness at Noon number eight on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, even though Koestler wrote it in German.
The book delivers well on its premise, so if it sounds interesting to you, go for it! It delivers on what is promised.
Darkness at Noon is one of a class of novels, mostly prison and interrogation things, in which all is just so hopelessly restrictive and cramped - so lacking in even the smallest victories.
So, it's not fun. And it's not particularly new.
Koestler, though, was an early-adopter communist who had suffered through such imprisonment. He developed a main character, Rubashov, who swings from stoic to frantic and foundering to scheming wildly and naturally. He's human. Smarter than most and with stronger commitment to his beliefs than most, but human.
Better than that, Koestler is able to let these same glimmers of humanity shine through all of his characters. The interrogator slips from behind his rigid facade. The never-seen fellow prisoner in the next cell, there for a political offense that doesn't mesh well with Rubashov's, can't hide the frailty and warmth he'd prefer to deny even behind a brick wall. …
Darkness at Noon is one of a class of novels, mostly prison and interrogation things, in which all is just so hopelessly restrictive and cramped - so lacking in even the smallest victories.
So, it's not fun. And it's not particularly new.
Koestler, though, was an early-adopter communist who had suffered through such imprisonment. He developed a main character, Rubashov, who swings from stoic to frantic and foundering to scheming wildly and naturally. He's human. Smarter than most and with stronger commitment to his beliefs than most, but human.
Better than that, Koestler is able to let these same glimmers of humanity shine through all of his characters. The interrogator slips from behind his rigid facade. The never-seen fellow prisoner in the next cell, there for a political offense that doesn't mesh well with Rubashov's, can't hide the frailty and warmth he'd prefer to deny even behind a brick wall. All battle to subvert their natural instincts in order to act according to their ideals and all fail a little and succeed a little.
Lastly, this obviously could have been a bit too talky, but it's got a good drive. Koestler keeps weeks long interrogation moving and provides a bit of a symbolic history lesson (if you were wanting to know a little bit about what it was like to be on the wrong side of a Stalinist purge. And I'm sure you were.)
