Darkness at Noon, published in 1940, is Arthur Koestler’s famous novel based on the events of Stalin’s 1930s purge of supposed enemies of the Soviet state. Millions of ordinary people suffered in this terrible episode, as did important figures in the Soviet government. For the famous there were show trials prosecuting trumped up charges, seeking someone to blame for the fact that socialist utopia had yet to arrive. Darkness at Noon describes the fate of a fictional government official following his arrest.

Do novels change the world? Not often. But maybe this one did.

Koestler wrote the book in France during difficult circumstances at the outbreak of World War Two. An upbringing in Austria, and a history as a Communist sympathising journalist, caused the French to imprison him in an internment camp for undesirable aliens. Koestler’s girlfriend at the time, the young artist Daphne Hardy, managed to get the Darkness at Noon manuscript, written in German, back to London, where Jonathan Cape published her English translation. After the war, the book became a massive bestseller. The Nobel Prize-winning writer Francois Mauriac claimed that record breaking French sales led to the Communist Party losing the French general election of 1946. In the UK, it appears that the Information Research Department, a branch of the British Foreign Office responsible for covert propaganda, purchased thousands of copies to boost the book’s profile, and distributed foreign language editions through embassies.

This is quite a revelation for me. I had always assumed that good novels tend to be unsuitable for propaganda purposes, characteristically dealing with shades of grey rather than the black and white of political slogans. And yet here we have a classic novel which the British government used in covert propaganda campaigns. So, what is this book like?

Nikolai Rubashov, one of the original architects of his country’s communist revolution decades previously, reflects on his life following arrest. Rubashov’s thoughts deal with all kinds of political and moral complications, but his basic insight is clear – he considers too much clarity of purpose in politics as potentially dangerous. Problems arise when people seek, or are promised, a final outcome so wonderful that any means become acceptable in achieving it. Now, this isn’t a spoiler, but if someone is arrested by secret police, charged with plotting the overthrow of a ruthless political regime, and interrogated by fanatics looking to find a scapegoat for social problems, then it’s pretty clear how things are going to end. But by the time you finish Darkness at Noon you’re thinking that happy endings are positively unhealthy anyway, since they encourage ruthless means to reach them. Reassurance comes from the fact that Rubashov finally sees the advantages of not living life in terms of fairytale happy ever-afters.

Darkness at Noon is an enthralling and powerful novel. The fact that it has nothing of the simple-minded political slogan about it, makes its case all the more persuasive – the case for viewing politics as the Greek philosopher Plutarch once described it:

They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or a military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view, something which leaves off as soon as that end is reached. It is not a public chore, to be got over with. It is a way of life. It is the life of a domesticated political and social creature who is born with a love for public life, with a desire for honour, with a feeling for his fellows; and it lasts as long as need be.