Modern Age - Fall 2016 - 46

ANNIVERSARY

ARTHUR KOESTLER'S
TR AIL OF DARKNESS
F. Flagg Taylor IV

T

hat Darkness at Noon, in this seventy-fifth anniversary year of
its publication in the United States, continues to be read and
admired is indeed an impressive feat. One is tempted to think that
a novel so seemingly rooted in a signal event of the twentieth century-the Moscow show trials of the 1930s-would be regarded,
if at all, as an interesting historical marker. Yet Arthur Koestler's
novel has endured precisely because of its literary achievement
and its philosophical depth. It continues to give its readers a
plausible, subtle, and convincing account of an exceedingly mysterious and apparently incomprehensible phenomenon. Koestler
himself was well aware of the difficulty of his task: "To the western
mind, unacquainted with the system and the rules, the confessions of the Trials appeared as one of the great enigmas of our
time."1 Yet Koestler not only succeeds in shedding light on this
F. Flagg Taylor IV is associate professor of political science at Skidmore
College and editor of The Great Lie: Classic and Recent Appraisals of Ideology
and Totalitarianism (ISI Books, 2011). He is also editor of the dissident writings of Václav Benda, The Long Night of the Watchman, due out in spring
2017.
moder nagejour nal .com

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Modern Age - Fall 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Fall 2016

Contents
Modern Age - Fall 2016 - Cover1
Modern Age - Fall 2016 - Cover2
Modern Age - Fall 2016 - Contents
Modern Age - Fall 2016 - 2
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