Darkness at Midday Novel by Koestler: German Historical Fiction

The newly found misplaced textual content of Arthur Koestler’s fashionable masterpiece, Darkness at Midday —t
he haunting portrait of a revolutionary, imprisoned and tortured beneath totalitarian rule—is now restored and in a totally new translation.

Editor Michael Scammell and translator Philip Boehm introduce us to an outstanding novel, a remarkable find, and a fresh German translation of a global classic, "Darkness at Noon" by Koestler.

Since 1940, Darkness at Midday by Arthur Koestler has captivated readers worldwide. Translated into over 30 languages, this gripping novel serves as a classic anti-fascist work. What sets it apart is that all current versions are based on a hasty English translation of the original German, done by an inexperienced translator at the start of World War II.

Upon coming across a remarkable find in the Zurich Central Library archives in 2015, Matthias Weßel unearthed Arthur Koestler's original, full German manuscript for what would later be known as "Darkness at Midday." This lost treasure, believed to have been forever gone during the chaos of war, has now resurfaced. Thanks to this incredible literary revelation and a fresh English translation sourced directly from the initial German text, readers can finally delve into "Darkness at Midday" as Koestler intended it to be.

Set within the Thirties on the peak of the purge and present trials of a Stalinist Moscow,
Darkness at Midday is a haunting portrait of an ageing revolutionary, Nicholas Rubashov, who’s imprisoned, tortured, and compelled by way of a sequence of hearings by the Occasion to which he has devoted his life. Because the stress to admit preposterous crimes will increase, he re-lives a profession that embodies the horrible ironies and betrayals of a cruel totalitarian motion masking itself as an instrument of deliverance.

Koestler’s portrayal of Stalin-era totalitarianism and fascism is as chilling and resonant in the present day because it was within the Nineteen Forties and in the course of the Chilly Battle. Rubashov’s plight explores the which means and worth of ethical selections, the sights and risks of idealism, and the corrosiveness of political corruption. Like
The Trial ,
1984 , and
Animal Farm , it is a ebook you need to learn as a citizen of the world, wherever you’re and wherever you come from.