In _A Handful of Blackberries_ Rocco de Donatis returns to the village of San Luca at the end of World War II. Formerly a fanatical Communist, he breaks with the Party. The novel describes the Party’s attempt to ruin his life and his fiancée’s. Figuring in the story is an ancient trumpet traditionally used to call the peasants to action “when we just can’t stand things any longer.” Rocco’s survival and the inability of the Communists to seize the symbolic trumpet to pervert it to their own uses signalize a sort of victory. In their total effect these novels are an indictment of both Fascism and Communism. Simply written yet powerful, they display a deep sympathy for the poor and oppressed. =Arthur Koestler: The Bolshevik on Trial= Like Orwell and Huxley, Arthur Koestler wrote a novel which, without one plea or exhortation, is a political instrument through the strong emotional and intellectual response which it can create. _Darkness at Noon_ (1941) tells the story of Nicolas Rubashov, an old Bolshevik once second only to “No. 1” in what is unquestionably Russia. But now this legendary hero of the Revolution lies in a small isolation cell awaiting the ordeal which is to lead to confession and abnegation at a public treason trial. Through the use of flashbacks, this stark and powerful novel traces Rubashov’s career. All the usual elements are there--the devotion to the Party, the cold betrayals, the blind obedience. Eventually the repressed questions had risen to the surface. In attempting to work them out Rubashov had arrived at disillusionment and “political divergencies.” Eventually he concludes that the mistake was that “we are sailing without ethical ballast.” The trial over, he is led down a dark corridor deep within the prison. He reflects that Moses was allowed to see the Promised Land. “He, Nicolas Salmanovitch Rubashov, had not been taken to the top of a mountain, and wherever his eye looked, he saw nothing but desert and the darkness of night.” An instant later the bullet crashes into the back of his head. One is appalled not only at his career and those of the thousands of Rubashovs who have helped to create the Soviet state, but at the whole process which creates a Rubashov--and a No. 1. AFRICA