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 … 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.
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I’m glad I finally read this classic. It provided the most personal, visceral view of Stalin’s Soviet Union that I’ve ever had. But I was most struck by the protagonist’s psychological journey — from newly jailed apparatchik, through psychological torture, twists and confusing turns of reasoning, to trial and dubious confession.
If I had to describe Darkness at Noon in one word (why would I ever have to do this? It’s not important), I’d call it “brooding.” The book details the imprisonment and confession of Nicholas Rubashov, a member of the communist old guard who has been accused, somewhat arbitrarily, of crimes against the state.
The majority of the novel is set in Rubashov’s cell, where he communicates with his neighbours using a tap code, and the interrogation room, where he undergoes questioning by two men: Ivanov, an old friend who retains some sympathy for him, and Gletkin, a younger man who represents to Rubashov the changing face of the party he helped build. The action briefly flashes to other times and places, mostly through Rubashov’s recollections of events that are being used against him in the accusation.
The story is lean, slow, and meditative, with most of the action occuring inside Rubashov’s head as he reflects on his situation and explores his shifting attitudes towards communism. Koestler’s creates a rich and conflicted character in Rubashov, a man too intelligent to buy the absurdities of communism, yet nevertheless dedicated to the movement and not yet ready to disavow it. At the start of the book, Koestler provides a brief note explaining that Rubashov is a composite of many individuals who were purged during the Soviet show trials of the late 1930s, and this authenticity bleeds into the narrative.
The prose was rich and engaging, full of sumptuous images that chronicle Rubashov’s inner and outer turmoil. It’s worth noting that the English version of the novel is actually a work of translation, despite appearing on the Modern Library’s Top 100 Best English Language Novels of the 20th Century. I imagine it was deemed to qualify because Koestler’s original manuscript (written in German) was lost, and Daphne Hardy’s English translation was the first version to see publication. I question whether it counts, personally, but translation or no, it’s an excellent novel, and the psychological richness of Koestler’s account cannot be denied.
I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, Descendents of Arthur Koestler and the University of Edinburgh, and Scribner. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read Darkness at Noon of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest, personal opinion of this work. I am pleased to recommend this novel to friends and family. I urge everyone to read this work and then VOTE!
I had a vague concept of the movements of Stalinism, Fascism, Communism, Trotskyism, Socialism and how they affected the lives and times of Europeans in the twentieth century. I could never understand WHY the proponents of these social movements were willing to be cleansed, as it were when that ideology evolved into that of another social concept. Arthur Koestler explains it, very well.
This book was originally published in 1940, an anti-totalitarian work perhaps based on the life and persecution of Bolshevik leader Nikolai Burkharin in 1938. Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian-British author/journalist was arrested as a communist spy during the Battle of Malaga (February 3-8, 1937) in the Spanish Civil War, and spent three months imprisoned in solitary confinement in the city of Seville seeing others lead out for execution and fearing he might be next. This novel reads tension, prosecution and torturous influence very well.
And it has an interesting history. In publication around the world since 1940, Koestler finished the novel in Paris in April 1940. Arrested by the French Police as an enemy alien and a Soviet spy and imprisoned in Le Vernet internment camp in the south of France, he was able to work sporadically on the novel in the prison camp and finish it after his release to house arrest due to lack of evidence. While he was imprisoned his English girlfriend, Daphne Hardy had started translating some excerpts from the original novel. She had no experience of translation, no access to reference material or even dictionaries, but did the best she could. With the novel and translation finished in April 1940, and with Koestler’s enthusiastic encouragement, she submitted her translation to publisher Jonathan Cape in London, and Koestler mailed his carbon copy in German to a publisher in neutral Switzerland – only days before Germany invaded Paris. When Hardy and Koestler fled Paris ahead of the Germans, the original of the novel in German was lost and the Swiss publisher was never heard from. The world was at war – Koestler assumed the manuscript never made it to Switzerland. The many translations in print since 1940 are of Robin Hardy’s English translation of Arthur Koestler’s German copy of the book.
In 2015 a German graduate student working on Koestler’s German writings stumbled across the carbon copy of a novel titled The Vicious Circle in the archives of Europa Verlag in Switzerland, under the German spelling of Rubashov – Rubaschow. The several first pages of the carbon manuscript were marked with French censor stamps, and the work meant little to Swiss editors in the 1940s.
Though her work was considered very good, her translation fluid, Robin Hardy’s lack of reference materials and youth had an unintended nuance on Koestler’s work. This translation from Koestler’s actual work by Philip Boehm, fluent in German and Polish and with years of experience in both translation and Marxist-Leninist jargon, makes for a tighter, more fierce work.