Darkness at Noon: A Novel

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.

As a fan of Gulag memoirs, I really like this story. On the dedication page, author Arthur Koestler explains, "The life of the man N.S. Rubashov is a synthesis of the lives of a number of men who were victims of the so-called Moscow Trials." It begins at 5 o' clock in the morning; an hour after the arrest of Nicolas Salmanovitch Rubashov, the "ex-Commissar of the People" is contemplating his surroundings. Of the situation he thinks, (p 1) "So far everything was in order." Having read the book at the same time as I was listening (for the second time) to Coming Out of the Ice: An Unexpected Life by Victor Herman (an American who followed his Socialist father to Russia in 1931 and ended up in the Gulag in 1938), I was struck at the differences in their post-arrest circumstances. While the American spent his pre-interrogation incarceration starving, along with 15 other men, crammed like sardines in a tiny concrete cell, constantly bombarded with the stench of the communal waste barrel, where they slept fitfully on the floor in a constantly-lighted room with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, Rubashov was allowed to smoke in his comparatively luxurious isolation cell, which contained a (barred) window, mattress, blankets, washbasin, and disinfected waste can. Unlike Victor Herman (who had to first decipher the "tap language" and would be sent to the isolator if caught using it), Rubashov already knows the `"quadratic alphabet,"' and so is able to immediately correspond with the occupant of the adjacent cell, whose political leanings, different than Rubashov's, result in some pretty interesting communication between the two men. Much of the middle of the story involves Rubashov thinking back on incidents in his life that likely led to his arrest, especially his involvement in and actions on behalf of the cause that culminated in the Civil War. He justifies things, (p 76) "For the movement was without scruples; she rolled towards her goal unconcernedly and deposed the corpses of the drowned in the windings of her course," and contemplates his likely fate, "The Party knew only one crime: to swerve from the course laid out; and only one punishment: death." Before too long, he meets his interrogator, an "old college friend" named Ivanov. The two philosophize about politics as Ivanov provides details of Rubashov's past political transgressions from his file and eventually reveals the ridiculous crime of which he's been accused, conspiring to kill Stalin. Prison officials mess with Rubashov's mind as he goes through the interrogation process, trial, and punishment. Darkness at Noon, an easy read, is an excellent story about the Purge and Stalin's mistreatment of powerful persons that opposed him. Also good: Coming Out of the Ice: An Unexpected Life by Victor Herman (choose the unabridged MP3 version), 11 Years in Soviet Prison Camps by Elinor Lipper, and Man is Wolf to Man by Janusz Bardach.

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.

Brilliant read thanks

Wem Diktaturen fremd sind oder wer sie idealisiert, sollte dieses Buch unbedingt lesen.

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

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.