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Darkness at Noon

Darkness at Noon

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Darkness at Noon

by Koestler, Arthur

  • Used
  • good
  • Hardcover
  • first
Condition
Good/Poor
ISBN 10
0224603868
ISBN 13
9780224603867
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About This Item

Cape, 1940. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Good/Poor. The boards are a bit marked and worn. Internally mostly clean and tightly bound - if slightly cocked and sprung. One signature, minor offsetting and a few spots. The jacket is from a later edition. It is a bit chipped and marked.. Our orders are shipped using tracked courier delivery services.

Synopsis

Darkness at Noon, by Hungarian-born British writer Arthur Koestler, is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government that he had helped to create. The novel is understood as an allegory to the USSR in 1938, the Great Purge, and the Moscow Trials. However, the text never mentions the Soviet Union or Russia (just “Country of the Revolution” and “Over There”) or Joseph Stalin (only “Number One,” a menacing dictator). Perhaps the lack of specific references is Koestler’s way of making the story seem more universal, but it’s clear he has in mind actual places, people, and events. Koestler was actually a proponent of Marxism-Leninism until Stalin’s 1938 Purge and the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact. Afterwards, he edited an anti-Hitler, anti-Stalin newspaper. Koestler wrote the novel in German while living in Paris, from where he escaped in 1940 just before the Nazi troops arrived. Darkness at Noon owes its publication to the decision of sculptor Daphne Hardy, Koestler’s lover in Paris, to translate the text into English before she herself escaped. Koestler wrote Darkness at Noon as the second part of a trilogy; the first volume is The Gladiators (1939), first published in Hungarian. It is a novel about the subversion of the Spartacus revolt. The third novel is Arrival and Departure (1943), about a refugee during World War II. By then living in London, Koestler wrote the third in English. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Darkness at Noon number eight on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Sidney Kingsley adapted it for Broadway in 1951.    

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Details

Bookseller
Chapter 1 Books ZA (ZA)
Bookseller's Inventory #
958m
Title
Darkness at Noon
Author
Koestler, Arthur
Format/Binding
Hardcover
Book Condition
Used - Good
Jacket Condition
Poor
Quantity Available
1
Edition
1st Edition
ISBN 10
0224603868
ISBN 13
9780224603867
Publisher
Cape
Date Published
1940
X weight
1 oz

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About the Seller

Chapter 1 Books

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
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About Chapter 1 Books

Chapter 1 trades out of three premises that are all in the Johannesburg area. Our emphasis is on providing quality books at highly competitive prices. A large (and continuously growing) selection of our books are listed on various websites on the internet. We specialise in Modern First Editions, Rhodesiana, Africana and other rare and out of print books.

Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Jacket
Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
Cocked
Refers to a state where the spine of a book is lightly "twisted" in such a way that the front and rear boards of a book do not...

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