In the midst of what feels like constant terrible political news and reports of the rise of fascism and authoritarianism in areas all around the world, what better kind of book is there to read than a novel about the arrest, imprisonment, unfair trial and execution of a political dissenter?
Darkness at Noon is one of those books that I've had since college and have no memory of reading, although I did find markings in the book that resemble my marginalia, so it's quite possible I did. Either way, it would have been twenty years since I had read it, so I was almost certainly due for a reread. The book was written by a man who had left the Soviet Union in the late thirties and was imprisoned and almost killed before he was able to flee to the U.K., and the story focuses on the story of a citizen of an unidentified country whose revolutionary party has now become the tyrants. It's a compelling read, even though it takes place almost entirely during his time in a prison cell, but the reader learns who he was before his imprisonment and can see the mechanics of his conviction and execution being carried out. I hesitate to calling it hopeful, or even worse a great warning for our own time, but it gave me a lot to think about specifically regarding the cycles of political and societal progress and regression that occur over time. The protagonist is not presented as a hero wrongly maligned; the reality is far more complicated than that. He is someone who was actively doing the right thing, until it became clear to him that it wasn't right at all, and that sort of reassessment simply wasn't acceptable. The system failed him, whereas they would say that he failed the system. I am glad I read this book, and if I did read it as a college student, I wish I knew what I thought of it then.
Grade: B
Darkness at Noon is one of those books that I've had since college and have no memory of reading, although I did find markings in the book that resemble my marginalia, so it's quite possible I did. Either way, it would have been twenty years since I had read it, so I was almost certainly due for a reread. The book was written by a man who had left the Soviet Union in the late thirties and was imprisoned and almost killed before he was able to flee to the U.K., and the story focuses on the story of a citizen of an unidentified country whose revolutionary party has now become the tyrants. It's a compelling read, even though it takes place almost entirely during his time in a prison cell, but the reader learns who he was before his imprisonment and can see the mechanics of his conviction and execution being carried out. I hesitate to calling it hopeful, or even worse a great warning for our own time, but it gave me a lot to think about specifically regarding the cycles of political and societal progress and regression that occur over time. The protagonist is not presented as a hero wrongly maligned; the reality is far more complicated than that. He is someone who was actively doing the right thing, until it became clear to him that it wasn't right at all, and that sort of reassessment simply wasn't acceptable. The system failed him, whereas they would say that he failed the system. I am glad I read this book, and if I did read it as a college student, I wish I knew what I thought of it then.
Grade: B
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