I’m often asked for a book list by listeners and readers. Until now, I hadn’t formally put one together. But, over the past couple of weeks, I began compiling a fiction list, divided by topic. The categories are rather fluid – for example, I have a category for Science Fiction, in which some of the books clearly overlap into the category for Political Fiction (see, e.g., 1984 by George Orwell or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley). With that said, here are my top five political novels. Leave your own picks below!
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
This book is a wildly underappreciated classic – even though it is indeed very much appreciated by literary types. Koestler essentially fictionalizes the stories of Old Soviets who have been deemed bourgeois by Stalin; the main character, Rubashov, is arrested by the NKVD and thrown into prison, awaiting interrogation and execution. The novel follows Rubashov’s thoughts as he communicates with his next-door cellmate, remembers his own participation in Communist atrocities, and finally realizes that in order to justify his life, he must sign off on the lie that he is actually anti-Communist, thus upholding the regime. Dark and terrifying and shockingly accurate about human nature. Here’s Koestler, inside Rubashov’s mind: “Soon it would be over. But when he asked himself, For what actually are you dying? he found no answer. It was a mistake in the system; perhaps it lay in the precept which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed: in the precept, that the end justifies the means.”
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