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Arthur Koestler

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Arthur Koestler


Born
in Budapest, Austria-Hungary
September 05, 1905

Died
March 01, 1983

Genre


Darkness at Noon (1940), novel of Hungarian-born British writer Arthur Koestler, portrays his disillusionment with Communism; his nonfiction works include The Sleepwalkers (1959) and The Ghost in the Machine (1967).


Arthur Koestler CBE [*Kösztler Artúr] was a prolific writer of essays, novels and autobiographies.

He was born into a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest but, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. His early career was in journalism. In 1931 he joined the Communist Party of Germany but, disillusioned, he resigned from it in 1938 and in 1940 published a devastating anti-Communist novel, Darkness at Noon, which propelled him to instant international fame.

Over the next forty-three years he espoused ma
...more

Average rating: 4.07 · 72,393 ratings · 5,166 reviews · 170 distinct works • Similar authors
Darkness at Noon

4.12 avg rating — 35,231 ratings — published 1940 — 2 editions
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The Sleepwalkers: A History...

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4.24 avg rating — 1,260 ratings — published 1959 — 70 editions
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The Thirteenth Tribe: The K...

3.93 avg rating — 998 ratings — published 1976 — 55 editions
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The Ghost in the Machine

4.01 avg rating — 680 ratings — published 1967 — 41 editions
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Scum of the Earth

4.32 avg rating — 600 ratings — published 1941 — 43 editions
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Dialogue with Death

4.13 avg rating — 586 ratings — published 1937 — 26 editions
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The Act of Creation

4.24 avg rating — 543 ratings — published 1964 — 56 editions
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Arrival and Departure

3.68 avg rating — 513 ratings — published 1943 — 76 editions
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The Gladiators

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3.86 avg rating — 452 ratings — published 1939 — 5 editions
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The Roots of Coincidence

3.83 avg rating — 418 ratings — published 1972
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Quotes by Arthur Koestler  (?)
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“The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.”
― Arthur Koestler

“Satan, on the contrary, is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic. He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness. He is damned always to do that which is most repugnant to him: to become a slaughterer, in order to abolish slaughtering, to sacrifice lambs so that no more lambs may be slaughtered, to whip people with knouts so that they may learn not to let themselves be whipped, to strip himself of every scruple in the name of a higher scrupulousness, and to challenge the hatred of mankind because of his love for it--an abstract and geometric love.”
― Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon

“Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion. ”
― Arthur Koestler

Polls

April 2024 New School Classic Group Read Poll

 
  48 votes, 26.4%

Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck, 1954, 249 pages
 
  45 votes, 24.7%

True Grit by Charles Portis, 1968, 224 pages
 
  25 votes, 13.7%

The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark, 1970, 103 pages
 
  23 votes, 12.6%

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, 1940 216 pages
 
  20 votes, 11.0%

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz, 1956, 501 pages
 
  17 votes, 9.3%

The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay, 1989, 518 pages
 
  4 votes, 2.2%

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