Describe Appertaining To Books Darkness at Noon
Title | : | Darkness at Noon |
Author | : | Arthur Koestler |
Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 216 pages |
Published | : | March 1984 by Bantam Books (first published 1940) |
Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. Historical. Historical Fiction. Politics. Literature. Cultural. Russia. Novels |
Arthur Koestler
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 216 pages Rating: 4.04 | 25169 Users | 1365 Reviews
Ilustration To Books Darkness at Noon
Darkness at Noon (from the German: Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best-known work tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik 1917 revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned and tried for treason by the Soviet government he'd helped create. 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 relives 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, it 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."Point Books Supposing Darkness at Noon
Original Title: | Sonnenfinsternis |
ISBN: | 0553265954 (ISBN13: 9780553265958) |
Edition Language: | English |
Characters: | Nicolas Salmanovitch Rubashov |
Rating Appertaining To Books Darkness at Noon
Ratings: 4.04 From 25169 Users | 1365 ReviewsComment On Appertaining To Books Darkness at Noon
An Announcement Concerning the Class Traitor NotAfter a scrupulously fair trial in the Amazon People's Court, Comrade Not has been found guilty of posting an ideologically unsound review. To protect other comrades from the possibility of being seduced into thought-crime, the review has now been removed from the community area. Amazon has also offered Not a course of reeducation. Their representatives arrived promptly at 4 am yesterday morning, and courteously but firmly helped Not to understandDarkness at Noon is one of the classics of anti-totalitarian literature, often mentioned alongside novels such as Brave New World and 1984. While both these novels are fictions based on an idea of a totalitarian state, Darkness at Noon is a clear allegory of Soviet Russia during the 1930's - the time of the Moscow show trials and the Great Purge.Although the author openly acknowledges this in the preface, the country in which the book is set is never named - though he includes specific details
Definitely one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. I am embarrassed, frankly, that I'm 37 and reading this only now. This is a work I should have read in high school, then in college, then again almost every year since. Standing guard silently behind greats like Orwell and Hitchens is Arthur Koestler. Rubashov is one of the best-realized characters and Darkness at Noon is a near-perfect novel. Dostoevsky would have killed Koestler with an axe, and Tolstoy would have pushed his ass in
Recommend through Postman, who described it as complementing the 1984-Brave New World discussion. He was right! D at N is about the hypocritical cycle of power, the failures of revolutions, and whether or not ends justify means. Rubashov is a sympathetic protagonist, which makes his own failures and complicity all the more engaging. The book is careful to never mention major historical figures or regimes by name - this isn't a book about how mean Stalin was. It's about how power will always be
I told myself I'd read enough WWII stories, but something had always drawn me to Darkness at Noon, so I started it anyway. Maybe I was meant to abandon it from the start.Try as I did, I couldn't find anything to get excited about in this story. Still, I didn't hate it. Honestly, I wish I did. I felt nothing toward it -- something a story hasn't ever done to me. If nothing else, I'll always remember it for that.Although Darkness at Noon seems clearly set in Soviet Russia during the 1930s, the
An interesting novel but I find it pale in comparison with real prison literature, I'd recommend Evgenia Ginzburg's memoir Journey into the Whirlwind above this without hesitation, not on account of literary merit but simply because of the author's sense of surprise at the unlikeliness of it all. Koestler's fiction is a work of the imagination. Something designed to serve the purposes of the author, that gives insight into their opinions and not into (save perhaps accidentally) the situation
Nothing is worse in prison than the consciousness of one's innocence; it prevents acclimatization and undermines one's morale...Comrade Rubashov has been arrested. But this is nothing. He's been around this block before. He knows, for instance, this truth about the consciousness of innocence - as the unseen man in the neighboring cell clearly does not. The unseen man who taps at the pipe...who is in many ways not unlike the conscience Comrade Rubashov put into storage some forty years before;
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