Published in 1951 this novel by Koestler seems to have been largely forgotten and I find it difficult to understand why this should be so, because it is a cracking good read. Koestler was living in Paris at the time of writing and he imagines the city a few years later as the hub of a struggle between the West and the communist East. In the book he has re-labelled the communists as the Free Commonwealth and since the end of the second world war their power and influence has increased to such an extent that the West fears that Europe will soon be swallowed up in their expansionist policies. At the start of the novel Koestler zooms in on an intellectual soirée celebrating the storming of the Bastille, where Monsieur Anatole holds court. The guest list includes the newly arrived Attaché from the Free Commonwealth (Fedya Nikitin), an American colonel and his daughter Hydie a smattering of french intellectuals including Pontieux (who maybe Jean-Paul Sartre) and would be dissidents from the Commonwealth. During the excitement of the Firework display Hydie accidentally bloodies the Attachés nose and during the confusion and fuss of cleaning jackets, picks up his notebook which seems to contain a list of names.

Koestler takes his readers inside the house and vividly relates the various conversations revealing the tensions between the East and the West and the uncertainties of the french intellectuals. The story will develop with a love affair between Hydie and Fedya and Koestler details the backgrounds of his two protagonists. Fedya comes from an impoverished backward part of Russia, but his father was a hero and martyr of the revolution and so he has been able to work his way up through the party machine to have his first posting in the decadent West. Hydie by contrast comes from a wealthy American family and was educated in a convent, but at 23 years old she has already been married and divorced. Another soirée at the house of monsieur Anatole a couple of months later brings more tension, as it takes place just after the announcement of the death of the Father of the Commonwealth (Stalin): the would be dissidents are wondering which way to jump and the french intellectuals are also on uncertain ground. Meanwhile Fedya and Hydie have entered into a tempestuous love affair and Delattre a French poet surmises that such a relationship can end in one of three ways:

The Taming of the Shrew
Samson and Delilah
or even: Judith and Holofernes.

An atomic bomb explosion deep inside the Commonwealth raises tensions further and the various characters must come to terms with world events that will reshape their lives, or lead to their early deaths. Someone says the morbid longing of our age is the nostalgia for the Absolute, as the anti- clericalism of the Commonwealth threatens to overwhelm catholic France. The Western nations come under much criticism and self criticism as Koestlers witty and cogent dialogue, describes the various nationalities through delightful repartee that does not spare anybody:

Leontiev (a commonwealth dissident) had once read a book called Alice in Wonderland and since that time knew that it was no use trying to argue logically with an Englishman.

Comment to an American - “you are a negro-bating, half civilized nation ruled by bankers and gangs, whereas your opponents have abolished capitalism and at least have some ideas in their heads."

On the Western Press: "You have teachers to educate the children, but you have gangsters take charge of the uneducated masses who are just like children."

The French are characterised as a nation ready to roll over and adapt to a new regime, but some will make a"grand gesture" in the face of the inevitable. The Commonwealth are likened to a giant washing machine which will wash clean all the individuality from the cultures that they forcibly stuff into their mechanism.

Koestler's story is a good one steeped in the atmosphere of Paris, which is desperately trying to become the Gay Paris of the period before the war, but whose intellectual community struggle with their existential existence. The linking device of Monsieur Anatole's soirees create an atmosphere that co-exists with the struggles of the individuals who frequent his salon. The book ends with Monsieur Anatole's funeral cortege and the bewildered characters travel in horse drawn carriages through a Paris where rumours abound of a Commonwealth invasion and the people inside the carriages contemplate their next move. It finishes off the novel in some style.

Koestler captures the thoughts and anxieties of a post war community centred in Paris, but with heightened tension caused by the aggressive expansionism of the Free Commonwealth (Russia) and the puzzle of an atomic explosion deep within Russian territory. The affair between an American woman and a Commonwealth apparatchick never pretends that it will be able to transcend the differences between the cultures and carries all the more authenticity for that reason. The book sometimes finds itself in the genre of science fiction, because Koestler is imagining a situation a few years in the future, but it reads more like an alternate history; a slightly different time line perhaps. Whatever genre one chooses in which to place it, I think it is a clever, thoughtful novel: one that raises many issues still relevant today and with a backdrop of the city of Paris about to stare into the abyss along with Hydie and Fedya's doomed love affair there are enough thrills to make this a five star read. A real gem.

I wonder if Jean-Paul Sartre was amused by this supposed conversation by his fellow countrymen:

"He had a truly pernicious influence on the younger generation. In my eyes he is the symbol of the intellect’s betrayal of the spirit
“He is just a clever imbecile said Julien ‘It wasn’t his fault if people took him seriously. He was more surprised about it than anybody else. The funny side of it is that his wife has always been a real honest to God Commonwealth agent a fact which poor Pontieux/Sartre never guessed - and that she of course is free." ( )