Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (1940, Hardcover)

Does my vomitng in anguish in reading this book, and my subsequent days of deep depression at how humanity is futile, make my rating this as Excellent justifiable? I hope so, because the suffering and frustration one feels at the results of the Moscow Trials are unbearably painful reading.

Although the characters in "Darkness at Noon" by Arthur Koestler are ficticious, the historical circumstances which determined their actions are real. The life of the fictional man named N. S. Rubashov is a synthesis of the lives of a number of men who were victims of the Moscow Trials, several of them were personally known to the author. This book is dedicated to their memory, as is, I suspect, Arthur Koestler's own suicide 40 years later. Frankly, I don't know how he survived that long considering the ripped-apart soul that is exposed in his documentation of what happened to these men and millions of others.

"They were at that time a handful of men of an entirely new species: militant philosophers. They were as familiar with the prisons in the towns of Europe as commercial travellers with the hotels. They dreamed of power with the object of abolishing power; of ruling over the people to wean them from the habit of being ruled... Where were they? Their brains, which had changed the course of the world, had each received a charge of lead. Some in the forehead, some in the back of the neck."

"Darkness at Noon" is the most famous novel by Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler. Published in 1940, it tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik old guard and 1917 revolutionary who is first cast out and then imprisoned and tried for treason by the Soviet government he once helped create.

The novel is set in 1938 during the Stalinist purges and Moscow show trials. It reflects the author's personal disillusionment with Communism and Stalin's destruction of the revolution. Although the characters have Russian names, neither Russia nor the Soviet Union are actually mentioned by name as the location of the book. Joseph Stalin is described as "Number One," a never-seen and menacing totalitarian leader.

Koestler drew on his own experience of being imprisoned by Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Like Rubashov, he was in solitary confinement, expected to be executed, paced his cell constantly, was permitted to walk in the courtyard in the company of other prisoners, was not beaten himself but knew that others were beaten. His so realistic writing of what it must be like to be in solitary confinement is heart breaking.

American screenwriter and USA Communist Party member Dalton Trumbo bragged in "The Worker" newspaper that he had prevented "Darkness at Noon" and other anti-Stalinist books from being produced into Hollywood films.

I almost wish to dare you into reading this book and NOT giving it an Excellent rating despite the horrors of Party realities it exposes. It is an extremely painful book to read.