Lost manuscript turns up in Zurich
A long-lost original version of the novel *Darkness at Noon* by author Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) has resurfaced after decades—at the Zurich Central Library.
The typewritten manuscript was found by a doctoral student at the University of Kassel in Germany. The text allows new conclusions to be drawn about the origin of the former bestseller, according to the university's announcement on Monday, which was quoted by the news agency DPA. Previously, only a retranslation from English had been known. It was assumed that the original text was lost when Koestler fled from France to England to escape the Nazis in 1940. It has not been conclusively proven whether the original has been found, but there is every indication that it has - including handwritten corrections and additions by Koestler. How the document found its way into the archive remained unclear at first.
Actually looking for something else
He had been looking for something else about Koestler in Zurich, German studies doctoral student Matthias Wessel told the SDA news agency. And then he was given this manuscript from the archive, dated March 1940, which did not bear the title chosen by Koestler but by the archiving office and was named after the novel's main character Rubashov. Wessel now has to study Koestler's letters from the time when "Solar Eclipse" was written, which could provide further information, in Moscow. They were taken there after the occupation of Berlin by the Red Army, having already been removed from Paris, where Koestler lived around 1940, by the Nazis.
Zürcher Europa Verlag important for exiled authors
In Zurich, Europa Verlag was an important address for German-speaking exiled authors persecuted by the Nazis, such as Koestler with his Austro-Hungarian and Jewish background. This could be the reason for the archiving on the Limmat. In his best-known work - "Sonnenfinsternis" ("Solar Eclipse") from 1940 - the once staunch communist Koestler takes a hard line on the Stalinist purges and show trials in the Soviet Union in 1937/38. In Great Britain, he became one of the most important authors in the English language. "Solar Eclipse", the novel in which Koestler deals with his commitment to the left-wing Republicans in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), became a bestseller in English as "Dark at Noon". (SDA)
