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Arthur Koestler

Darkness at Noon Paperback – Jan. 1 2006

by Arthur Koestler (Author)

4.5 1,437 ratings

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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.

Print length

273 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Scribner
Publication date

Jan. 1 2006
Dimensions

13.34 x 1.52 x 20.32 cm
ISBN-10

1416540261
ISBN-13

978-1416540267
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Product description

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)

About the Author

Arthur Koestler (1905-1983) was a Hungarian-British author and journalist who immersed himself in the major ideological and social conflicts of his time. In 1931 Koestler joined the Communist Party of Germany until, disillusioned by Stalinism, he resigned in 1938. In 1940 he published his novel Darkness at Noon, an anti-totalitarian work that gained him international fame. Over the course of his life, Koestler espoused many political causes. His novels, reportage, autobiographical works, and political and cultural writings established him as an important commentator on the dilemmas of the twentieth century.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner (Jan. 1 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 273 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1416540261
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1416540267
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 249 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.34 x 1.52 x 20.32 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #458,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 1,437 ratings

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Arthur Koestler

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Born in Budapest in 1905, educated in Vienna, Arthur Koestler immersed himself in the major ideological and social conflicts of his time. A communist during the 1930s, and visitor for a time in the Soviet Union, he became disillusioned with the Party and left it in 1938. Later that year in Spain, he was captured by the Fascist forces under Franco, and sentenced to death. Released through the last-minute intervention of the British government, he went to France where, the following year, he again was arrested for his political views. Released in 1940, he went to England, where he made his home. His novels, reportage, autobiographical works, and political and cultural writings established him as an important commentator on the dilemmas of the 20th century. He died in 1983.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

1,437 global ratings

5 star		69%
4 star		21%
3 star		7%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from Canada

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Tom Gray

Insight

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 15, 2018

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This is a novel of great insight. I found it to be compelling reading. I attempted to read this about 40 or 50 years ago in my youth. I don’t this I made it very far. I wasn’t ready for it. I’m glad that I have matured enough intellectually that I could read this book with profit. It is a very good book.

“The ultimate truth is the penultimately always a falsehood.” So begins the ‘The Second Hearing” potion of “Darkness at Noon”. The novel is ostensibly written about the Soviet show trials of the 1930s. However, in my opinion, it goes much beyond that to questions that are universal in politics. How does humanity define or better determine what is true and valuable? How is political truth found and used? That is the question that this novel addresses and that question spans all forms of politics from a rights-based democracy to a collectivist autocracy,

Koestler examines the issue from the perspective of the conflict between the divergent interests of the individual and the collectivity. In reading the novel, I thought of Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”. Koestler then presented the example himself in the musings of the novel’s hero Ruboshov. Raskolnikov reasoned that he is entitled to murder and rob the pawn broker because he will sue the proceeds for better ends that she would. The means justify the ends. And yet he was plagued by conscience. He murdered not only her but her innocent sister in the commission of the crime. What justification could he provide that made his life more valuable than theirs? This is the conflict in the revolution between the “We” and the “I” that Koestler presents. It is the monologue or dialogue with the silent partner that the points out. It is the conflict between the visceral emotion and the cerebral reasoning. How is truth and ethics defined.

One can see the issues discussed here in the political questions of our time. Globalization has increased world wealth incredibly and yet it also has caused great hardship to individuals. The answer to this dilemma ca only be found politically and that is the major political question of our day. “The ultimate truth is the penultimately always a falsehood.” Answers to this question compete in the political sphere. Society will select one of these answers and declare it to be the “truth” and all others to be “false”. This “truth” is politically constructed and selected. It is the product of both collective reasoning and individual emotional assessment.

2 people found this helpful

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Daffy Bibliophile

The Changing of the Guard

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 29, 2013

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It seems that every violent revolution must go through a period of repression in order to control the powerful social forces that the revolution itself has released. In Russia in the 1930s this period of repression was known as Stalinism.

Written by Aurthur Koestler, a Hungarian by birth, a Communist by choice until he realized the true nature of Stalinism, "Darkness at Noon" (1940) is a look at this transition from hopeful revolution to repressive dictatorship. I have never read a better account of the changing of the guard from the old Bolsheviks to the young Stalinists, from philosophers with dreams to bureaucrats with guns.

The protagonist in this novel is a man named Rubashov, an old Bolshevik who is arrested during the Great Purge of the late 1930s. Koestler created Rubashov from several people that he had known who were arrested, tried and executed. "Darkness at Noon" is a very thought-provoking book; it poses many questions on both the personal and the political level. The reader can sense Koestler's sense of betrayal by and his disappointment with the Soviet Union under Stalin and also his disgust with what Stalinism did to individual human beings.

I'm fairly sure that George Orwell must have read "Darkness at Noon" before writing "1984" - Orwell knew Koestler from their time spent in Spain during the Civil War and later in Britain. In both books one can see the same abhorrence of totalitarianism and of politics based on "the end justifies the means". Like Orwell's book, "Darkness at Noon" is an indictment of Stalinism and totalitarianism in general. The brutality, the inhumanity and the vicious mindlessness of a true totalitarian system are portrayed brilliantly in Koestler's well-written novel.

You don't have to be an expert on Soviet history to read this book, just remember that events like this really did happen and that Koestler served as an observant witness of the events of the 1930s & 1940s and as a witness he deserves a hearing so that we can learn from him. Stalin's Russia may be gone but totalitarianism still exists. We should learn from history and "Darkness at Noon" is a great place to do so.

3 people found this helpful

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Still a great novel, not that much different from the standard translation

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 2, 2020

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Readers familiar with the 'standard' translation will find this a welcome occasion to re-visit an old Comrade. I find that the European flavor of the canonical version is changed to a more Americanized diction, which is a bit jarring when the subject matter is clearly Eastern European (Gletkin's follow-on from finding about the hours of the day, for example).

Where we know that he quoted Darkness at his public trial, it is useful to have Bukharin's 'confession' included so that the parallel language is clear.

This remains one of the great novels of the last century. Rubashov's exploration of moral ambivalence, and of ends and means remains personal questions for all of us.

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Paul burrows

Acommodation with Power

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 19, 2014

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All the little accommodations and compromises with power that slowly subvert the individuals ideals. If a reckoning comes, can you say that you maintained the substance of your ideals or did you sell-out? Sometimes it is not clear, in the day to day of life, exactly which you are doing.

One person found this helpful

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Davor

Excellent

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 2, 2019

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Insightful and right on the mark.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on August 6, 2018

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Nice book, underrated!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 12, 2018

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Good

Helpful

Charles Lewis

A grim reminder to fight communism

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on December 16, 2021

This is one of those novels that just sticks with you. I'd call it claustrophobic and Kafka-like. The protagonist has somehow offended The Party and now is in prison awaiting his fate. It's about the need for totalitarian states to quash even the slightest bit of dissent but in such a way that the "guilty" is humbled. There is no room for truth. What the party says is truth is truth even if it changes from day to day. It is beautifully written in that you don't want to put it down but at the end you're exhausted. It's fiction but it is also truth.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Meg

Excellent!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 1, 2022

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Brilliant read thanks

Giedrius Alasevicius

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 17, 2016

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Amazing book. :)

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 27, 2016

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This book was indeed a nearly new condition book. It's condition made the wait worth while. Many thanks

Hd Tgram

History repeats itself

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 26, 2020

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The novel explains why Koestler gave up his communist beliefs by dissecting the details of the show trial of the real-life Bukharin, who was one of the main progenitors of Bolshevism along with Lenin and Trotsky. Stalin had Bukharin executed after forcing him to confess, in a trial that the whole world watched, to being a Fascist sympathizer.

Koestler's book is like a more detailed version of the story of how Winston in Orwell's 1984 was interrogated for a confession. The tragedy is that Bukharin was a real person. But before you feel sorry for him you should consider that he very much was a Bolshevik revolutionary and they weren't very nice people at all either and Bukharin was probably the most powerful Bolshevik leader helping Stalin crush his enemies as he consolidated power. Bukharin was also the editor of Pravda, which lied in print for the sake of preserving the gulag system where hundreds of thousands of people were worked to death in the freezing cold with near-starvation level food rations. There are almost no good guys in the history of Russian/Soviet Communism.

It is extremely difficult not to draw parallels with our current political situation, where all of the mainstream media sources seem to be following the Stalinist playbook when it comes to information, viz. the media is acting like The Ministry of Truth in Orwell's 1984. Joe Biden is a great unifier etc etc. It is hard to see how we are not being set up for a similar fate to what happened under Stalinism in Russia. Right now there are a lot of optimistic, naive young people like how Bukharin and his fellow bolsheviks were when they first got the revolution going. It will end in the same way because, as you see explained in a book like this one, they are being used for their hopeful enthusiasm to further the aims of ruthless people who want absolute global power.

81 people found this helpful

Harry J. Foxwell, PhD

Informative and relevant

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 29, 2019

Verified Purchase

I recall reading this long ago and not connecting/understanding it.
Now, with the new translation, and the context of today's news and
state of the world, it's shockingly relevant. Extreme ideological purity,
joined with the view that the end justifies the means (any and all means
however oppressive and violent), that now infects our world.
Not an easy read, but powerfully descriptive of great moral questions.
And illuminating about that period of time - Stalin's Russia and the
millions he sent to their deaths. Should be read with a focus on the
current resurgence of totalitarianism, in China, North Korea, the Middle
East, and unfortunately, here in the US.

37 people found this helpful

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