Through flashbacks the reader sees Stalin, Lenin, and the members of the First International Congress. Not only does he witness the breaking of Rubashov for his trial, but also the series of cold and merciless acts of expediency which have eroded the soul of the old Bolshevik and left him ready for his final service to the Party. Koestler describes the agonizing process by which the confession is extracted. Gletkin, his interrogator, supplies the rationale for the whole performance and for most of the repressive acts of the state as well. In some ways, Rubashov is reminiscent of Trotsky, with his pince-nez, his record as a commander in the Revolution, his extensive service outside Russia, and his onetime rank as a top Communist. (A closer resemblance to Trotsky is that of the Party’s fictitious scapegoat in 1984. Emmanuel Goldstein, with his fuzzy hair and small goatee, is the arch counter-revolutionary, the author of _The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism_.) _Darkness at Noon_ is a stark and brilliant book. Artistically satisfying, it also presents a record of a characteristic phenomenon of Russian Communism. =Marie-Henri Beyle [Stendhal]: Napoleonic Panorama= Thirty-nine years after he followed Napoleon’s armies into Italy, Stendhal published a sweeping novel of that era. _The Charterhouse of Parma_ follows the career of Fabrizio Valserra, Marchesino del Dongo, from birth to death. It shows the influence upon his life of his beautiful, devoted, and scheming aunt, the Contessa Gina Pietranera. We meet her lover, Conte Mosca della Rovere Sorezana, Minister to Prince Ernesto IV of Parma and politician extraordinary, and become privy to the intrigues of the court. This large novel is crammed with incident--duels, assignations, affairs, prison-breaks, and even the assassination of a monarch. Besides all this, Stendhal relates some of the major events in French and Italian history during nearly thirty years. In particular, we see Napoleon’s triumphal entries into Italy in 1796, 1801, and 1815. Fabrizio even participates on the fringes of the battle of Waterloo. With each arrival and departure, Napoleon’s adherents and those of the Austrian Emperor play musical chairs for the positions of power. Even after Napoleon has been banished to Elba a struggle goes on between Liberals (or Jacobins) and the proponents of absolute monarchy. The Liberal cause is perverted in Parma by the rascally General Fabio Conti, who ironically serves as Ernesto’s political jailer, but the temper of this movement in Europe is reflected in the thoughts and actions of many of the characters. Describing authoritarian government and the struggles against it, as well as the interrelation of a corrupt church and a corrupt state, Stendhal’s classic successfully fuses the lives of his people with the times in which they lived. =André Malraux: Comintern v. Kuomintang=