Arthur Koestler's Trilogy

 

In the early 1980s, I came upon a copy of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon in my public library and until recently, I believed that, in spite of the fact that I couldn't remember story details, I had read the novel. I wanted to "reread" the book recently and discovered that the book is part of a trilogy on, as Koestler wrote in a postscript to the third novel, "the conflict between morality and expediency".

If I was to "reread" Darkness at Noon, I wanted to read the the other novels in the trilogy as well. The first novel in the series is The Gladiators which portrays the effects of the Spartacus revolt of 73 BC in the Roman Republic. The novel was certainly interesting, but I would not classify it as a "must-read". If I were to grade it on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give the book, perhaps a 6.5 at best. One odd problem with the book is the mentioning of the Romans eating "corn". At first, I thought Koestler's translator was using the word, as it is sometimes used in British English, as a generic term for cereal grain. However, at one point, the word was translated as "maize" which is strictly "Indian corn". Maize was not available to the Romans before the Columbian exchange in the late 15th Century. I put that error on the translator.

It didn't take long into my reading of Darkness at Noon to admit that I did not read the book in the 1980s as I had imagined. Unlike the first book in the trilogy, I would classify this book as a classic and a "must-read". The novel is set between 1938 and 1940, after the Stalinist Great Purge and Moscow show trials. I would put this novel along side Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Albert Camus' The Stranger.

The third novel in Arthur Koestler's trilogy is Arrival and Departure. This was Koestler's first novel written originally in English. According to wikipedia, Arrival and Departure "is often considered to be the weakest of the three. " I wouldn't agree. While not exactly reaching the level of Darkness at Noon , I believe it is better than The Gladiators. The time line and theme of the third book in the trilogy is much closer to the second than is the story of the Spartacus revolt.

If one has the time and inclination, then read the entire trilogy. If you don't have the time, read Darkness at Noon. As I said, that one is a "must-read".