Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-14% $14.57$14.57
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$12.03$12.03
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: KRF Crown
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Audible sample Sample
Follow the author
OK
Darkness at Noon: A Novel Paperback – September 17, 2019
Purchase options and add-ons
Editor Michael Scammell and translator Philip Boehm bring us a brilliant novel, a remarkable discovery, and a new translation of an international classic.
In print continually since 1940, Darkness at Noon has been translated into over 30 languages and is both a stirring novel and a classic anti-fascist text. What makes its popularity and tenacity even more remarkable is that all existing versions of Darkness at Noon are based on a hastily made English translation of the original German by a novice translator at the outbreak of World War II.
In 2015, Matthias Weßel stumbled across an entry in the archives of the Zurich Central Library that is a scholar's dream: “Koestler, Arthur. Rubaschow: Roman. Typoskript, März 1940, 326 pages.” What he had found was Arthur Koestler’s original, complete German manuscript for what would become Darkness at Noon, thought to have been irrevocably lost in the turmoil of the war. With this stunning literary discovery, and a new English translation direct from the primary German manuscript, we can now for the first time read Darkness at Noon as Koestler wrote it.
Set in the 1930s at the height of the purge and show trials of a Stalinist Moscow, Darkness at Noon is a haunting portrait of an aging revolutionary, Nicholas Rubashov, who is imprisoned, tortured, and forced through a series of hearings 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 betrayals of a merciless totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance.
Koestler’s portrayal of Stalin-era totalitarianism and fascism is as chilling and resonant today as it was in the 1940s and during the Cold War. Rubashov’s plight explores the meaning and value of moral choices, the attractions and dangers of idealism, and the corrosiveness of political corruption. Like The Trial, 1984, and Animal Farm, this is a book you should read as a citizen of the world, wherever you are and wherever you come from.
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateSeptember 17, 2019
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.9 x 8.38 inches
- ISBN-101501161318
- ISBN-13978-1501161315
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together
Similar items that may deliver to you quickly
Editorial Reviews
Review
"A rare and beautifully executed novel."
― New York Herald Tribune
"There is nothing stilted about the new Darkness at Noon. It is a seamless, chilling book about the demands ideology makes on truth." -- Aatish Taseer ― Air Mail
"Its central theme will probably always seem timely, because every political creed must eventually face the question of whether noble ends can justify evil means…a subversive book even today.” -- Adam Kirsch ― The New Yorker
"Koestler’s novel is worth reading (or rereading). It shows how easily a smart person can justify monstrous acts." -- Nancy Updike ― Foreign Policy
"Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon was one of the most influential novels of the 20th century, and the 20th century would have been a better century had it been more influential still." -- Andrew Stuttaford ― Wall Street Journal
"The translation itself shines. It is a smooth, gripping read, and contains passages inserted after Hardy’s translation was made, which now appear in English for the first time...This is a valuable translation of a novel that continues to enthrall." -- Maya Chhabra ― Los Angeles Review of Books
Arthur Koestler "left behind him a body of work that will always be absorbing and challenging to anyone who admires men of principle or who enjoys the battle of ideas for its own sake." -- Christopher Hitchens ― Slate
"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." ― Times Literary Supplement (UK)
"One of the few books written in this epoch which will survive it." ― New Statesman (UK)
“Darkness at Noon still lives as a study of fear and victimhood, of state brutality, of unjust imprisonment, of interrogation and forced confession.” ― The Guardian (UK)
"Koestler demonstrates you needn't sacrifice prose for ideas...This is a book that needs to be read...This is a story that everyone needs to know, one that cuts to the heart of what it means to be a prisoner without rights." -- Michael Schaub ― Bookslut
"What makes Darkness at Noon such an enduring artistic work is Koestler’s firsthand knowledge of his source material." ― Acton Commentary
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Scribner; Reprint edition (September 17, 2019)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1501161318
- ISBN-13 : 978-1501161315
- Item Weight : 8.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.9 x 8.38 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #26,950 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #594 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- #1,057 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #2,716 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
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
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
"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.
The novel has three main characters: Rubashov, a high-ranking and influential member of the party who's arrested at the beginning of the novel, Ivanov, his former friend and colleague and high-ranking security official who's appointed to interrogate him, and Gletkin, another interrogator who contrasts Ivanov's cynicism with an apparatchik's "true believer" mentality. The focus of the novel is Rubashov's imprisonment, his reminiscences, and primarily Ivanov's and Gletkin's efforts to get him to confess to conspire to assassinate "No. 1" and other disloyal crimes against the state. What makes "Darkness" work so well for me is that Rubashov is no admirable, "closet" liberal. He has in fact sacrificed party members in the past who have deviated from the "party line" and believes, even up to the end, that "personal liberty and social progress are incompatible." But he's intelligent and has seen enough of Marxism-Leninism in power, or the Stalinist variation of it, to be aware of its human costs, although he seems to think, like Ivanov, that these human costs are transitional. After all, the party has taught him, and they all seem to agree, that "the only morality refers to social utility" and the end justifies the means. But for some reason he's perceived as dangerous and part of the "opposition" within the party (Lenin eliminated the opposition outside the party), and so he's arrested.
Ivanov is also intelligent, and a cynical high-ranking security official, and it's fascinating to see his almost gentle, but very psychological and political, approach to secure Rubashov's confession. Rubashov knows he's a dead man once he's arrested and seems to have a fatalistic view and no fear of physical distress. Rubashov's initial disinclination to confess is mocked by Ivanov; he tells him that personal heroism is personal vanity and he seems to agree since Marxist-Leninists only recognize social utility as a moral or positive goal. The party's hold on Rubashov is unending; he has taken "the vows of his order" (i.e., the party) and even his death must not subvert the party's goals but enhance them. I found the dialogue between Rubashov and Ivanov in the "Second Examination" to be evocative of the dialogue between Ivan and Alyosha in Dostoyevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor" and almost as brilliant. In both dialogues, one side advocates improving the future well-being of the "masses" at the cost of the present, and of human freedom as well as the need to eliminate heretics, both religious and political, while the other side seems to be wary of human utopianism and social engineering; of course, Rubashov lacks Alyosha's innocence and religious faith. But hear the cynical Ivanov denounce human feeling: "One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions. That is the first commandment for us (i.e., party members). Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance, and atonement are for us repellent debauchery." That's writing!
Top reviews from other countries
“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.
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.
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.