Every author's dream

'Koestler himself was soon benefiting from the Information Research Department’s propaganda campaigns. Darkness at Noon, whose depiction of Soviet cruelty had established Koestler’s credentials as an anti-communist, was circulated in Germany under its auspices. In a deal struck with Hamish Hamilton, director of the the eponymous publishing house and himself closely tied to intelligence, 50,000 copies were purchased and distributed by the Foreign Office in 1948. Ironically, at the same time, “the French Communist party had orders to buy up every single copy [of the book] immediately and they were all being bought up and there was no reason why it should ever stop being reprinted, so in this way K[oestler] was being enriched indefinitely from Communist Party funds."'

from Who Paid the Piper? by Frances Stonor Saunders, quoting Living with Koestler by Mamaine Koestler