Darkness at Noon

A brilliant new translation of Koestler's long-lost original manuscript.

Darkness at Noon is the sort of novel that transcends ordinary limitations...written with such dramatic power, with such warmth of feeling, and with such persuasive simplicity

A piece of brilliant literature

A remarkable book, a grimly fascinating interpretation of...all revolutionary dictatorships, and at the same time a tense and subtly intellectualised drama of prison psychology

[Darkness At Noon] is written from terrible experience. From knowledge of the men whose struggles of mind and body he describes. Apart from its sociological importance, it is written with a subtlety and an economy which class it as great literature. I have read it twice without feeling that I have learned more than half of what it has to offer me- Koestler approaches the problem of ends and means, of love and truth and social organisation, through the thoughts of an old Bolshevik, Rubashov, as he awaits death in a GPU prison

Along with Animal Farm and 1984, this book formed part of the essential bookshelf of those intellectuals who repudiated their early illusions about the Soviet Union

Darkness at Noon [is] a guided tour of a totalitarian mind... it gave me a deep, life-long interest in politics

One of the few books written in this epoch which will survive it.

One of the most celebrated political novels of the 20th century

Arthur Koestler was born in Budapest in 1905. He attended the University of Vienna before working as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Berlin and Paris. For six years he was an active member of the Communist Party, and was captured by Franco in the Spanish Civil War. In 1940 he came to England, adopting the language with his first book in English, Scum of the Earth. His publications manifest a wide range of political, scientific and literary interests, and include Darkness at Noon, Arrow in the Blue and The Invisible Writing. He died in 1983 by suicide, having frequently expressed a belief in the right to euthanasia. Philip Boehm translates books and plays by German and Polish writers such as Herta Müller, Franz Kafka and Hanna Krall. He also works as a stage director and playwright.