I am not sure how many people still remember but the second half of the twentieth century was defined mostly but the ideological battle between Capitalism and Communism. Darkness At Noon is essentially a look at the ideas and logic behind the Communist way of thinking, as well as being a story about one man being confronted with himself and the actions of his life.
The story follows the imprisonment and trail of the ficticious N S Rubshov who, as one of the founding intellectuals of the Party, is of the last of this band of pioneers to be brough to his knees by the new regime. No actual names or places are mentioned in the book but (and I stand to be corrected on this) I think it can be interpreted as Stalin has just come to power in the Soviet Union and he is busy ridding the Party of all members of the old guard, of which Rubishov is one of the last to go. The irony for Rubishov is that he is being disposed of with much the same manner that he and his colleagues employed when dispensing of those whose ideas they deemed contrary to the ultimate ends of the revolution. However, being both an intellectual and suddenly on the wrong side of his own equation Rubishov breaks down this problem over the course of the book and so we get an insight into the logic of the Communist project.
I reckon that for most of us, if we gave a thought to Communism at all, it came mainly in the form of a grey society with a distinct lack of human rights where everybody stood in long queues all the time, ratted on their friends and dreamt of owning a pair of blue jeans. Either that or they were Dolf Lungren getting beefed up steroids in order to kick the shit out of Rocky IV. While all that and more is probably quite (or at least approximately) true, it doesnt really give you an idea of the actual reasoning that led to the creation of such a society. So check this book out - it is full of thoughts and ideas so it does require concentration but it not super heavy or very long and is written in a pretty straightforward way.
How long do you have to read the books? I would be interested in how many days it took you to ready each book.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I have a limit but my guess is that it would take a couple years to read them all.
ReplyDeleteI'll try keep a note of how long it takes me to read each one. This one didn't take me that long in actual reading time but overall it took me about six weeks because I ended up reading a bunch of other books in between.