About the Book

Darkness in 1984 — Winner of the Historical Fiction Unpublished Award, Eyelands Book Awards 2024

George Orwell. Arthur Koestler. One winter in 1945 changed the future of political literature.
The Eyelands Book Awards 2024 Historical Fiction Award winner — a novel that takes the real Christmas of 1945, when George Orwell stayed with Arthur Koestler in a remote North Wales cottage, and turns it into a gripping, intelligent reconstruction of the conversations that would ultimately help shape the novel 1984. Marsden blends meticulous historical detail with psychological tension, showing two men who know the world is about to change — and that they might be the ones who have to say it first.

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