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Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler
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Darkness At Noon stands as an unequaled fictional portrayal of the nightmare politics of our time. Its hero is an aging revolutionary, imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Party to which he has dedicated his life. As the pressure to confess preposterous crimes increases, he re-lives a career that embodies the terrible ironies and human betrayals of a totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance. Almost unbearably vivid in its depiction of one man's solitary agony, Darkness At Noon asks questions about ends and means that have relevance not only for the past but for the perilous present. It is—as the Times Literary Supplement has declared—"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..."
- Sales Rank: #106962 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Bantam
- Published on: 1984-04-01
- Released on: 1984-03-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.85" h x .55" w x 4.21" l,
- Binding: Mass Market Paperback
- 224 pages
- Great product!
Amazon.com Review
This splendid novel is set in the tumultuous Soviet Union of the 1930s during the treason trials. Rubashov, the protagonist and a hero of the revolution, is arrested and jailed for things he has not done, though there is much about the current Soviet state that veered from his ideals as a revolutionary. His investigators, Ivanov and Gletkin, seek a public confession and interrogate him using a number of methods. Through the ordeal, Rubashov reaches an epiphany or two while his interrogators suffer the cruel fate of the Soviet machine. Darkness at Noon succeeds as political/historical novel, but even more so as a refreshing tale of the human spirit.
Review
"A remarkable book, a grimly fascinating interpretation of...all revolutionary dictatorships, and at the same time a tense and subtly intellectualised drama of prison psychology" Times Literary Supplement "[Darkness At Noon] is written from terrible experience. From knowledge of the men whose struggles of mind and body he describes. Apart from its sociological importance, it is written with a subtlety and an economy which class it as great literature. I have read it twice without feeling that I have learned more than half of what it has to offer me- Koestler approaches the problem of ends and means, of love and truth and social organisation, through the thoughts of an old Bolshevik, Rubashov, as he awaits death in a GPU prison" New Statesman "Along with Animal Farm and 1984, this book formed part of the essential bookshelf of those intellectuals who repudiated their early illusions about the Soviet Union" -- Christopher Hitchens The Week "It brilliantly portrays the chilling tyranny of Soviet Communism" -- Sandy Gall The Week
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
I feel like I will reread this many times because I truly ...
By J. Drews
Wanted to read this book for a long time. Finally did. I feel like I will reread this many times because I truly enjoyed the writing.. the complexities behind what was going on in the reality of Stalinist Russia, and how the ideology of the Party allowed for members to eat their own once they were expendable and used up. Very gripping and telling of what happens when a government is given this ultimate control over the people, and the horrors that happen against human nature when the views and stability of the Party override fundamental human rights and liberty.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
The view from inside the dustbin of history
By M. A. Krul
Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon", his magnum opus, is more than just a book. It is not a novel, nor is it an essay; it is a memory and an experience, a warning and a vision. It takes the reader into a nightmare world that is nevertheless real, an alternative history that is more history than alternative, and if he has a sensitivity to questions of history and politics, it is sure to be imprinted on his mind forever. In summary, it's one of the most powerful political books of the 20th Century.
The theme of the book is the experience of Stalinism, in particular the Stalinist Great Purges and the show trials during the late 1930s. Arthur Koestler himself was a Party socialist for much of his life, and only left the Soviet Union in 1938. Having known many of the Old Bolsheviks personally, he saw the state of the revolution taken over by Stalin and his henchmen, and witnessed the slow (and sometimes fast) destruction of the revolutionary old guard.
It's the experiences of this infamous Great Terror of communism, seen from the eyes of a communist, that form the basic of this book. The plot is rather limited in scope: the protagonist, N.S. Rubashov (probably loosely modelled after Bukharin), is arrested for 'counterrevolutionary crimes', and spends the rest of the book in prison, being interrogated and prepared for the inevitable show trial. This of itself is not particularly clever, but that is not the core of the book.
The real core of the book is Rubashov's fundamental theoretical paradoxical position: all his life he has believed in submitting the "subjectivity" of the individual to the demands of the Party, in the knowledge that they were building a future for mankind. All his life he has believed in History working its will, in the inevitable eventual victory of the right over the wrong. Yet now this same history has taken a turn, and he and the works of his generation are destroyed by the progeny of his own revolution. His interrogators, first the cynical intellectual Ivanov and later the farmer's son-turned-cadre Gletkin, want him to sign a series of damning confessions that are palpably false, which all parties involved know. Yet if the Party demands this of him, if this indeed is the will of History, can he resist? And moreover, how is it possible to begin with that the revolution led to the terror of "No. 1", the totalitarian Party leader?
Through a series of short but thrilling scenes in interrogation and longer periods of reflection, monologue interieure, and flashbacks, the downfall of a committed revolutionary and intellectual and his generation are painted as vividly and profoundly as one could demand of literature. This book is more powerful than Orwell's "1984" and yet more understanding than any of the common anti-communist works of the last century; it is a testament, dedicated to the generation of Trotsky, Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, Rakovsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and all the other fighters for socialism at the birth of that bloodiest of centuries.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
"1984" in 1938
By Gerald Brennan
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.
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