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Arthur Koestler

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Arthur Koestler


Born
in Budapest, 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: 4.06 · 57,827 ratings · 3,806 reviews · 259 distinct worksSimilar authors
Darkness at Noon

4.11 avg rating — 29,724 ratings — published 1940 — 291 editions
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The Sleepwalkers: A History...

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4.25 avg rating — 1,095 ratings — published 1959 — 41 editions
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The Thirteenth Tribe: The K...

3.94 avg rating — 799 ratings — published 1976 — 59 editions
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The Ghost in the Machine

4.02 avg rating — 621 ratings — published 1967 — 39 editions
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Scum of the Earth

4.32 avg rating — 479 ratings — published 1941 — 32 editions
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The Act of Creation

4.25 avg rating — 486 ratings — published 1964 — 40 editions
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Dialogue with Death

4.12 avg rating — 483 ratings — published 1937 — 41 editions
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Arrival and Departure

3.71 avg rating — 423 ratings — published 1943 — 74 editions
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ROOTS OF COINCIDENCE

3.83 avg rating — 373 ratings — published 1972 — 19 editions
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The Gladiators

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3.83 avg rating — 366 ratings — published 1939 — 79 editions
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More books by Arthur Koestler…
Quotes by Arthur Koestler  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“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

February 2020 New School Group Read

 
  67 votes, 24.6%

Blindness by José Saramago, 1995, 349 pages
 
  57 votes, 21.0%

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay, 1967, 182 pages
 
  50 votes, 18.4%

Rabbit, Run by John Updike, 1960, 325 pages
 
  44 votes, 16.2%

Quicksand by Nella Larsen, 1928, 192 pages
 
  32 votes, 11.8%

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, 1940, 216 pages
 
  22 votes, 8.1%

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