The God That Failed - Natt klockan tolv på dagen.
Gary Saul Morson writes about the Cold War classic that explained communism’s seductive pull on intellectuals, and why its warnings matter again now. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
A forgotten Cold War masterpiece reveals why intelligent people once embraced a murderous ideology—and why its appeal has not disappeared.
Three quarters of a century ago, questions like these led to one of the most important volumes to emerge during the Cold War. Now largely forgotten, The God That Failed (1949) was once so widely read that the volume’s title became a catchphrase for any movement that attracted intellectuals to a quasi-religious ideology claiming infallibility.
The God That Failed brought together several prominent European and American writers who had once either been members of the Communist Party or sympathetic to the Soviet Union, but had eventually grown disillusioned.
Each writer explained what initially attracted him to, and what eventually repelled him from, communism.
The star-studded cast included Arthur Koestler, an Hungarian-born British writer now best known for his brilliant novel about communism, Darkness at Noon; French novelist André Gide; the Italian Ignazio Silone, author of Bread and Wine; British poet Stephen Spender; and two Americans, journalist and author Louis Fischer, and African American writer Richard Wright.
Gary Saul Morson The Free Press 26 July 2026
RE: Jag minns än idag hur jag min första vecka i Lund läste Darkness at Noon.
Förhörsledaren hette Gletkin.
.
Kommentarer