Jan 2, 2010

Darkness at Noon | Critical Overview

George Orwell was the most influential initial critic of Darkness at Noon, which he called a “masterpiece” and explained in the New Statesman: “Brilliant as this book is as a novel, and a piece of prison literature, it is probably most valuable as an interpretation of the Moscow ‘confessions’ by someone with an inner knowledge of totalitarian methods.” Orwell wrote that the book was not received well, but Koestler’s biographers note that the book was indeed favorably reviewed. As David Cesarani writes in his biography Arthur Koestler: The...