Darkness at Noon

Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon stands as an unequaled fictional portrayal of the nightmare politics of our time. The book tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik 1917 revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned, and tried for treason by the Soviet government he helped create. 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 our perilous present.