Darkness at Noon

Description:

Set in the turbulent Soviet Union of the 1930s, Darkness at Noon tells the story of its Jewish hero and protagonist, Nilolai Salmanovich Rubashov. Unjustly accused of treason, Rubashov is forced to endure the nightmare of imprisonment and eventual execution for the crime with which he is charged. Rubashov's tragedy is that of an intellectual insider suddenly made outsider to the party he once supported. Through a series of interrogations by Ivanov, a former comrade in arms, and Gletkin, a young zealot, Rubashov is forced to examine the consequence of his previous adherence to a doctrine dedicated to its own fulfillment at all costs to ethics and freedom. It might be said that the dilemma in which the hero of Darkness at Noon found himself was one that had become distressingly familiar to its author, Arthur Koestler, in his own life; and though in Rubashov's case it acquires a political, and a philosophical, significance which transcends any purely personal experience, the autobiographical element in the novel is a very strong one and no doubt contributes to the intensity with which it is written. VIVA MODERN CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS presents the best current criticism on the most widely read and studied poems, novels and dramas of the Western world, from Oedipus Rex and the Iliad to such modern and contemporary works as William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Don Delillo's White Noise.

Target Audience:

Students of Literature, English Departments & Libraries.