The Invisible Writing

by Arthur Koestler

Taken together, Arthur Koestler's volumes of autobiography constitute an unrivalled study of twentieth-century man and his dilemma. Arrow in the Blue ended with his joining the Communist Party and The Invisible Writing covers some of the most important experiences in his life.

This book tells of Koestler's travels through Russia and remote parts of Soviet Central Asia and of his life as an exile. It puts in perspective his experiences in Franco's prisons under sentence of death and in concentration camps in Occupied France and ends with his escape in 1940 to England, where he found stability and a new home.

Genres: History, Biography, Autobiography, Nonfiction, Memoir, Politics, 20th Century

528 pages, Paperback

First published October 22, 2013

About the author

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 many causes, wrote novels and biographies, and numerous essays. In 1968 he was awarded the prestigious and valuable Sonning Prize "For outstanding contribution to European culture", and in 1972 he was made a "Commander of the British Empire" (CBE).

In 1976 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and three years later with leukaemia in its terminal stages. He committed suicide in 1983 in London.

Reviews

[Rhonda Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

EVERYTHING OLD HAS SHAPE-SHIFTED

Arrow in the Blue: The Invisible Writing
By Arthur Koestler
1954

Darkness at Noon may not be required reading anymore in universities, because Koestler is a dead white male who left the Communist Party. But The Invisible Writing, a 400-page volume of his four-part autobiography Arrow in the Blue, is still worth reading because it explains so much about the origins of the political culture (is there any other kind?) of the United States today — out of Alinsky by the C.P. You will find this history from three-quarters of a century ago surprisingly familiar today.

Koestler was from Hungary but spent much of the first half of the 20th century as a refugee, including some years as a political prisoner, when the Communist movement “travelled from the era of the Apostles to that of the Borgias” in three short generations. Why and how?

He writes that this closed system of thought, called the dialectical method or dialectical materialism, which inexplicably means talking about communism, is self-contained:

“My attitudes to art, literature and human relations became reconditioned and moulded to the pattern. My vocabulary, grammar, syntax, gradually changed. I learnt to avoid any original form of expression, any individual turn of phrase.” (pp. 26-27)

Then he lists acceptable and unacceptable vocabulary: decadent for the capitalist bourgeoisie; petit-bourgeois for humanitarian scruples; and many more. Scare quotes were used in writing to identify unacceptable political views. Today, instead of an original turn of phrase, a literary or traditional expression can also be unacceptable or at least a waste of time as deconstructionists discern the “real” meaning of what seems to be a straightforward declarative sentence: only they have the key to the real meanings. Now this technique can also be found, for instance, in the detection of “covert racism” in everyday interactions. (Scare quotes added.) “Micro aggressions” may be undetectable to the racist perpetrator or the oblivious receiver. Today we have universities with speech codes so someone can tell you what you mean.

Koestler wrote that “every single educated Communist … has his own private and secret philosophy whose purpose is not to explain the facts, but to explain them away,” or in Orwell’s word, doublethink. A literary example was the idea discussed in a party meeting that “to regard poetry as a special talent some men possess and other don’t is bourgeois metaphysics. Poetry, like every other skill, is acquired by learning and practice.” (p. 30) Thus sources of inspiration, literary or religious, other than Party-spawned, were not acknowledged. As a literary man, Koestler rationalized this nonsense. For a while. Till his friends were killed one by one. Rationalization was harder about the intentional starvation of millions of people under Stalin — but not impossible. People did it for decades.

The resentment against bosses, whoever they are, has shifted slightly: “... it would merely change from partial enslavement by landlords, tax-collectors and money-lenders, to total enslavement by the State, which is landlord, tax-collector and money-lender all in one.” (p. 117) Today in the West corporations are considered the enslavers but the State is posed as the antidote to corporate rule. Generally speaking, however, the State is armed. Corporations usually are not.

Regarding the Nazi threat:

“It is doubly painful to write about these seven years at a time when the mood of Western Europe is bent on repeating the same suicidal errors … that price of survival is the sacrifice of a distressingly large part of the national income over a distressingly long period; and that appeasement, however seductive and plausible its arguments sound, is not a substitute for military strength but an invitation to war.” (p. 189)

More than half a century after Koestler’s book was published, the Nazi threat is replaced by a renewed Russian threat and a new Islamic immigration threat in the form of jihadism (overt aggression) and sharia (pressure to change Western culture gradually). Relying on the United States for security since World War II, Europe poured its money into unsustainable welfare programs. Now we are doing the same but we don’t have anything like the United States to back up the United States, whose leader is an appeaser. The enemy, and there’s always an enemy, is redefined to suit the political winds. “It is so much easier to stand up in manly way to ‘French militarism in 1936, and to ‘American Imperialism’ in 1953, than to the Nazi and Soviet Empires.” (p. 191) Now many Americans love to say the enemy is us and ignore the barbarians at the gate. The Pogo, the swamp-dwelling possum, should be an icon for many Americans: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

In the old days, “everybody who was not on our side was a Fascist. The Socialists were ‘Social-Fascists’, the Catholics were ‘Clerical-Fascists,’ the Trotskyists were ‘Trotsky-Fascists,’ and so on.” (p. 244) The word fascism or fascist is thrown about in media today but it’s not quite clear what it means other than Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler: non-Communist tyrants? Who remembers them anyway? So the all-purpose attack word now is racism or racist.

In the ‘30s Koestler began writing a book about Spartacus and the slave revolt in Rome.

“The causes which led to these upheavals had an equally familiar ring: the breakdown of traditional values, a rapid transformation of the economic system, mass unemployment caused by the importation of slave labour and of cheap corn from the colonies, the ruin of the farmers and the growth of large latifundia [large farms worked by slave labor], a corrupt administration and a decadent ruling class, a falling birth-rate and a spectacular rise in divorces and abortions.” (p. 263)

Substitute illegal migrant labor for slave labor, cheap imports from overseas factories whether owned by Americans or not — the rest needs no substitutes.

One of the most important lessons in Koestler’s book is the description of the “People’s Front” policy (or the Popular Front). In 1935 the European Communist parties were relatively small and not part of mainstream parties. These Front organizations represented the war “front” and also the Communist Party façade. The boards might be seeded with non-Communists, as in the Committee for Spanish Relief for instance. (p. 324) The names of these groups then and now sound benign, using words like Freedom, Relief, Labor, People (the definition of “people” always excluding human beings like the Kulaks who could be killed in good conscience, or aristocrats as in the French Revolution), and so on. Pierre Laval of the Vichy government once asked Stalin what to do if the Communists continued to make trouble for the Nazis. Stalin said “Hang them.” (p. 325)

In the United States, anyone who suspected anti-war organizations or student groups during the Vietnam war of being infiltrated or controlled by the U.S. Communist Party was considered paranoid, but in fact Joseph McCarthy was correct, however crude he may have been. This was and is the Communist technique. Citizens of goodwill may (or may not) have solid moral principles and will defend them against perceived encroachers, but if the façade, the name, the associations are incorrect, they will ascribe evil to the wrong side. In Europe, Communists and Fascists were both evil yet people wanted to choose one side. When the Russian Communists, i.e. the International C.P., was with Hitler, so were the party members. When they were at odds, some members got confused but many went along with whatever Stalin said. “The men of goodwill of that era fought clearsightedly and devotedly against one type of totalitarian threat to civilization, and were blind or indifferent to the other.” (p. 365)

Perhaps the most important lesson to come out of this history is the attempt to crush objective truth, which is evident in today’s universities and churches.

“With our training in dialectical acrobatics it was not even difficult to prove that all truth was historically class-conditioned, that so-called objective truth was a bourgeois myth, and that ‘to write the truth’ meant to select and emphasise those items and aspects of a given situation which served the proletarian revolution, and were therefore ‘historically correct’.” (p. 387)

Today practitioners of relative truth are cruder, though, when they preach relativity for me but not for thee, and if they are unconvincing, they’ll hire lawyers. Everyone has his own truth, except people they disagree with. Who are you to judge, since you’re not them?

Deconstruction is political flim-flam, not intellectual subtlety. One of the grossest perversions of its own original aims has developed in the feminist movement. Now feminists (always leftists) have abandoned human principles of protecting women and children and gays against abuses such as are seen in the Islamic world, even when they are imported to the West. And it should go without saying that insistence on unlimited abortion protects neither the defenseless nor women, ignoring the obvious fact that half of the aborted are female.

The Soviet Union “represented ‘our last and only hope on a planet in rapid decay’.” (p. 389) No one could say this with a straight face anymore, but they can say it about, say, the Green movement. Radical solutions to problems and non-problems are the daily scare quotes in all conversation — and discussions on climate and other topics are closed until further notice, or until dissidents shut up. Hardly a scientific point of view. In his novel Darkness at Noon, Koestler writes, “It is necessary to hammer every sentence into the head of the masses by repetition and simplification. What is presented as right must shine like gold; what is presented as wrong must be black as pitch.” (p. 396) People who question the cause of, or existence of, global warming are compared to Holocaust deniers, or even to Nazis.

We expect that people in power would have better sources of information than the average person has, secret information, greater understanding. But after World War II, when the Soviets ruled one-third of the world, it was hard for people to believe that it was the most inhuman regime in human history. This is still true even after the disclosures about Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and so on.

“The difficulty is almost the same for the illiterate Italian peasant as for a highly literate French novelist like Sartre, or for a highly realistic politician like the late President Roosevelt — who sincerely believed that … the only threat to post-war peace would come from Britain’s imperialistic designs … in spite of all the available evidence about Communist theory and Soviet practice … [That] experienced democratic politicians all over the world could believe this, not to mention scientists, scholars and intellectuals of every variety, is an indication of the deep, myth-producing forces that were and still are at work.” (p. 390)

Nowadays, the same myth psychology keeps leaders today from admitting that the Muslim Brotherhood meant what it said a century or so ago when it declared war against the world. An experienced politician like Obama is either naïve or at some level is a Popular Front in himself.

At last, Koestler knew himself:

“Yet hope that in spite of all this the Socialist Sixth of the Earth would in the end justify their expectations, unwillingness to part with a cherished illusion, and intellectual pride which would not admit that they had been fooled, made them remain silent about the horrors of which they knew, and by their silence endorse them. The same is true of thousands of Communist or vaguely sympathizing writers, painters, actors, journalists, academic teachers, including myself.” (p. 412)

Despite the fall of the Berlin wall, Communism is not dead. It has shape-shifted.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

The boy Arthur turns man and German Communist Party member in this second volume of memoirs by the author of DARKNESS AT NOON. The title is a reference to his underground work for the Communist International. THE INVISIBLE writing is like a James Bond novel set in the 1930s, when the fate of the world was at stake.

[Alejandro Perez-Prat · Rating 5 out of 5]

La afiliación de Koestler al partido comunista provoca su despido de la agencia Ullstein, la poderosa cadena de diarios en la que trabaja. Auspiciado por el Comintern, de cuyo Apparat ya es miembro activo, viaja por la Unión Soviética y Asia Central. Vuelve a París donde colabora activamente con Willy Muenzenberg, otro importante agente del Comintern, en campañas de propaganda antifascista. Viaja a España en dos ocasiones, con la intención de obtener pruebas que confirmen la colaboración nazi en la sublevación del 36. En su segundo viaje es detenido y condenado a muerte, sentencia que nunca será ejecutada gracias, en gran medida, a una campaña de presión internacional promovida por Dorothy, la última compañera sentimental de esa época de su vida, de la que ya se había separado amistosamente. En la cárcel española reflexiona intensa y detenidamente sobre sus ideas políticas y, una vez liberado, decide abandonar el partido defraudado por completo por el comunismo y, más concretamente, por el estalinismo. Comienza entonces a escribir sus primeras obras.

Al evidente interés histórico de los hechos en los que estuvo involucrado, hay que sumar la también interesante evolución de su pensamiento político. Una evolución marcada, en muchos casos, por una "cobarde", según palabras del propio Koestler, acción de "quemar las naves", a la que recurre inconscientemente cuando la duda y el hastío se hacen insufribles y su inseguridad le paraliza. Una inseguridad que revela, por otro lado, su permanente contacto con la realidad, a la par que unas loables tolerancia y amplitud de miras.

La habilidad narrativa de este periodista-novelista-ensayista queda patente desde las primeras páginas del libro. Koestler nos sorprende comenzando su autobiografía con una visita a una hemeroteca a la que asistimos obligados por la propia lectura. Allí no hace otra cosa que consultar los periódicos correspondientes al día de su nacimiento, intentando trazar lo que él llama su "horóscopo secular". Así, citando textualmente el contenido de ciertas noticias y anuncios de los periódicos de aquella época -recurso que en su momento debió resultar hasta innovador-, a través de la lectura de una lectura -aspecto, por otro, lado presente desde el Quijote en la historia de la literatura-, nos introduce de forma solapada y amena en el decorado donde comienza la historia de sus antepasados más inmediatos.

Con la intención de ilustrar muchas de esas reflexiones literarias no duda en hacer referencia a sus propias obras, citando incluso algunos párrafos de las mismas, lo cual no es una mala introducción para un neófito de su obra literaria. En este aspecto resultan tanto o más interesantes las observaciones que hace sobre otros literatos húngaros, escritores europeos relacionados de una forma u otra con el comunismo, memorialistas ex-miembros del Apparat o supervivientes de campos de concentración estalinistas y nazis. Seria encomiable que más editoriales se dedicaran a recuperar algunos de esos libros. La lista es larga: Alex Weissberg (Conspiracy of silence), Manes Sperber, Alexander Foote (Manual para espías), Walter Krivitsky (Fui un agente de Stalin), Greta Neumann-Buber (Under two dictators), Bruno Heiling (Hombres crucuficados) y otros más conocidos como Bertolt Brecht, Anna Seghers o Ignazio Silone. Es más, probablemente algunos de ellos no vieron nunca la luz en España, debido a la censura franquista, y considero (espero no ser yo sólo) que no deben ser olvidados o ignorados, principalmente por razones históricas y por ser muchos de ellos testimonio de algo que nunca debería volver a pasar, aunque esta ultima consideración resulte un tanto tópica.

A pesar de su extensión, el estilo predominantemente llano y conciso, sembrado de agudas y sarcásticas apreciaciones de este inestimable observador crítico de sí mismo y del mundo que le rodea, sumado a la variedad de escenarios geográficos en que se desarrolla la obra, hacen que la lectura de estas memorias resulte fluida, ligera y francamente entretenida.

[Steve Groves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recently while sorting through my bookshelves I came across a battered copy of Arthur Koestler’s most famous novel ‘ Darkness at Noon’, which tells the story of a Bolshevik, Rubashov who undergoes imprisonment, torture and execution as part of Stalin’s most notorious purge in the late 1930’s. I picked it up and started reading but hours later found I could not put it down, which on reminiscing was the feeling that I had when I first read it over thirty years ago.

This time however, the book did not feel like a historical document, or a prophecy about the future of Socialism, it felt instead more like a news bulletin. Written nearly eighty years ago after Koestler’s break with the Communist party, of which he had been a member from 1931 to 1938 and capturing his disillusionment with the party, the broken promise of socialism and his own experiences in Spanish and French prisons, where he faced the very real possibility of death; it outlined the arguments that had led people like Rubashov to break all laws of humanity and in effect live a lie.

‘There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principal that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and scarified to the community- which may dispose of it as an experimental rabbit or a sacrificial lamb.’ – Darkness at Noon.

How was such a twisted system possible? What Koestler outlines in his novel and in the second volume of his autobiography ‘The Invisible Writing’, which is primarily a retelling of his communist party years between 1931 to 1938, and then his experiences in the early days of World War Two and his eventual escape to safety in England, is how the truth was manipulated and twisted, which has frightening similarity with our own times and ‘fake news’ and the use and abuse of social media. We should be in an era where propaganda and misinformation is all but eradicated, instead is more prevalent than ever.

The twisting of facts to fit a desired outcome is nothing new, as Koestler reminds his readers with a timely quote from Machiavelli in his novel: ‘Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But this must happen in such a way that no one becomes aware of it; or, if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand, to be produced immediately’. How often do we see this technique used in the modern day? But the precedents are numerous.

So, Koestler may be a dead white Hungarian-Jewish intellectual, who has gone out of fashion after being widely read from the forties to the early eighties, but on picking up his works again and particularly tracing his journey through the major political upheavals of the twentieth century, it is clear he still has much to offer, both as a guide and a prophet.

[Gregor · Rating 5 out of 5]

väga-väga soovitan!

[Amit · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What a life!" could really be the three word review of this amazing autobiography installment by Koestler. This is second part in the three part autobiography and probably the meatiest. I say probably, as I still haven't read the third, but considering that this covers historically the most interesting time in the life of modern Europe, I doubt his life could have been more eventful in the latter years.

I've been an unabashed fan of Koestler since I first read The Sleepwalkers. It got better with Darkness at Noon. Koestler is an amazing writer -- not because of style, but content. That pretty much holds good for his autobiography as well. Koestler's life is a like a miniature version of Europe in the pre and post communist wave. And he seems to have been everywhere at the right time (in the context of history -- although not in terms of personal safety for sure). Palestine, Russia, France, Spain, England ...

Koestler would, obviously, have it no other way. After being saved from a possible execution in Spain, and being interned in France as enemy alien, Koestler still didn't want to take a safe exit out of Europe:

And I also knew that my roots were in Europe, that I belonged to Europe, and that if Europe went down, survival became pointless, and I would rather go down with her than take refuge in a country which no longer meant anything but a refuge. This resolution was actually put to the test when France fell, and when, instead of heading for Palestine or still neutral America, I made my escape to England—which led to another stretch of solitary confinement in a London prison during the blitz. Yet even that prison-cell in Pentonville meant Europe, my home.

It's a truly remarkable life. And yet what binds the book together is not the action, but the intellectual journey that begun in Arrow In The Blue -- the chronicles of his growing disillusionment with the Communist party and politics, to his eventual break with the party.

As is so typical of the book, the restless narrator tells the story of his life, and the life of restless Europe, and of his ideological journey, through the politically/intellectually divided Europe. There is so much to take in in Koestler that it's a shame that he is so hard to find in bookshops, online or offline.

NB: It's interesting that I started this book on the even of the last new year and finished it on the eve of this.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would devide my life to before and after reading Koestler. He changed me to a different person. He was a man of a generation who witnessed final disaster of civil war in Spain and descending and demolishing of hope by communism in Soviet, while confronting the invasion of Fashism in Europe. He explained his generation’s pain and frustration as a most brave looser, not sophisticated but very simple. The best description of the time is when he says; The sun of the age of reason was setting down. Arrow in the Blue together with The Invisible Writing are kind of autobiography of first 35 years of Koestler's life.
تصور می کنم بخش هایی از این دو کتاب در یک کتاب به نام "سرگذشت من" با ترجمه ی ناصرقلی نوذری در اوایل دهه ی سی شمسی چاپ و منتشر شده باشد.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Koestler is one of my ideological "cantankerous" role models, an intellectual, who, even by his own admission at the time of penning the second volume of his political autobiography, "Invisible Writing", was hard to love and not the easiest choice for the intellectual leftist, what was then and now knowns as the "liberal" intelligentsia.
Koestler has lived through it all, the biggest shifts and cataclysmic events of the 20th century. Of Hungarian Jewish descent, the second volume of his autobiographical writings penned in 1953, deals with his conversion as a member of the Communist party (imprisoned in Seville during the Civil War) to its rejection, not without pangs of self questioning and introspection.
For an aficionado of the most turbulent period of modern history, Koestler is a first hand witness to the horrors of totalitarism and the excesses of communism, the grotesquery of which equals those of the National-Socialists of the Nazi Party. As Koestler wryly observes:
"Every period has its dominant religion and hope, and 'Socialism' in a vague and undefined sense was the hope of early twentieth century. So much so that German "National-Socialists", French 'Radical-Socialists', Italian 'Christian-Socialists' all felt that the need to include the fetish-word into their names."
The book as a memoir charters Koestler's gradual loss of faith and final rejection in communism as a personal doctrine and then as a regime, first in Russia and then exported, initially in Spain as a contamination of the Civil War and later on as the curtain fell over Europe at the end of the WWII through his first hand account first as a correspondent in 1930s Russia, where he witnessed the Ukrainian famine and the abominable living conditions which engulfed the whole of Russia as the communists took hold of power. But it wasn't until much much later as scores of his friends, contemporaries, almost all exclusively former comrades were mangled by the communist killing machine, along side the waves of Stalinist purges which killed millions, that Koestler leaves the "faith" behind.
I leave you with one paragraph which is Universal when he recounts, one again, the suspected assassination, by communist agents of a former stalwart:
"When a man is going to be hanged, he tends to over-estimate the interest which the world takes in his windpipe. Not one voice was raised among the editors, journalists, social hostesses and film-stars who had swarmed round Otto (Katz) alias Andre Simon in the romantic, pink days of the 'People's Front'. His last message was like a scribbled S.O.S in a bottle washed ashore by the sea, and left to bob among the driftwood, unnoticed by the crowd."
For every 'Darkness at Noon' fan, this read is a must.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkably honest, well written, and incredibly frustrating. While it is impossible to fully understand the dilemma of liberal thought in the second quarter of the 20th century in Europe, you would have to be similarly neurotic to understand Koestler's attraction to Communism with the knowledge he possessed during much of the period of his infatuation.

He manfully explains the pathology of the intellectual progressives of his era influenced by the Great War, Depression, the rise of totalitarian governments in Europe, anti-Semitism, causing an attraction to the flawed promise of Communism. However, trying to carry this explanation to the dysfunction of the contemporary progressive does not make a smooth transition. Perhaps it is the lack of intellectuals, no dialectic theory, and not enough to be angry about. The difference between rebels and revolutionaries?

[ArianeDeTroil · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Porque, en efecto, que le quemen a uno sus obras dos veces en vida es, después de todo, una rara distinción."
El siglo XX fue el siglo de los genocidios. Nunca antes en la historia el ser humano se había matado tanto y en tantos sitios. Arthur Koestler fue testigo de esa especie de locura colectiva que fue la Europa de entre guerras y durante la II Guerra Mundial, así como de los primeros años del sionismo y las primeras guerras árabe-israelíes.
Sus memorias dan buena cuenta de ello. Son a la vez terribles y adictivas porque este autor escribe como los ángeles. El autor desgrana con tristeza cómo (como tanto otros) ese tiempo que le tocó vivir le hizo perder su patria, su lengua, sus amigos y camaradas y, finalmente, su fe en un ideal en el que antaño creyó ver un futuro mejor para la humanidad.

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In gioventù l’universo mi era apparso come un libro aperto, stampato nel linguaggio delle equazioni fisiche e delle determinanti sociali, mentre ora mi pare un testo scritto con inchiostro invisibile, di cui, nei nostri rari momenti di grazia, siamo in grado di decifrare un piccolo frammento. Questo volume, quindi, è il resoconto del viaggio da una chiarezza speciosa a un brancolare nel buio." (p. 13)

[LuisJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This second part of Koestler's autobiography is much better than the first part.
Far more detail and also far more interesting on both a personal and political level.
In some ways this is a 3-star (Goodreads) book but the sheers uniqueness of things he was involved in, his (generally speaking) unvarnished self-honesty and the easy, logical flow of the narrative elevates it.

[Rick Wilmot · Rating 5 out of 5]

20th Century history at its best! And he advocated a United States of Europe as early as 1940. After WW2 it should have happened, and up to a point it did with the European Union, but today the British are intent on destroying it. Koestler would have seen this coming!

[M.J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating snapshot in time and a reminder of how much has changed in the world...and what remains eerily similar. Each chapter tells a separate memory or story from Koestler's very colorful life as a political activist and writer.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last chapter of Koestler's autobiography covers the years 1932 - 1940 and encompasses his break with Communism, and his flight from Europe and residence in England.

[Ben]

Pb, 1955 1sr Beacon Pr edition. Good. Covers 1932 -1940.

[Richard Odier · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lire de toute urgence
Formidable autobiographie d’un énorme écrivain du XX eme siècle
Traversée des dictatures soviétiques mais aussi des provinces asiatiques de l’URSS des années 30.
A offrir !

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't 'recommend' this as such - its misogyny, cruelty and self-regard are incessant - but grimly compelling on the Comintern intelligentsia of the thirties.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a fascinating polyglot, thinker, writer…

[Eli Susman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely changed the way I think about the world. Fantastic book

[David Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book details Koestler's experiences as a member of the Communist party in Europe before the Second World War, including his experiences of the Party itself, the Communist struggle against the rise of Nazism, Koestler's travels in the early Soviet Union, and his eventual westward before from the crushing, inexorable advance of the Third Reich (which would certainly have murdered him in its death camps). It is a lucid and intensely personal document of life between the wars, and a ruthless dissection of the rise of totalitarianism.

Most of all, this book is the story of Koestler's involvement with the pre-war Communist movement. It's the story of how Communism became a doctrine, then a cult that trammelled and suppressed free thought. He describes how he himself, this most original and lucid of thinkers, became almost religiously converted to Communism. He details how the Communist party developed a culture of stifling its own dissent. He explains how he began to censor his own criticisms of Communism, developing complicated mental filters that eventually allowed him to justify even the most obvious and horrific failings of the Soviet system.

Communism itself is barely involved. The merits and failings of the political system are irrelevant to the story. This is the story of how an idea was corrupted by its own believers: first exalted, then made inviolable, whereupon it stagnated and was perverted into a monstrous, evil caricature of its original self.

I whole-heartedly recommend this book to students of early-twentieth-century history; to people who've read Koestler's other books and appreciate his lucidness and insight; to students of the human condition; and to those interested in Communism or in cult psychology.

Most of all, I recommend it to anyone who's got an idea they think can change the world.

[Fred · Rating 5 out of 5]

koestler was famous euro man of letters, widely and wildly misinterpreted because he was so out of the box. embraced by the right for his expose of the central european show trials in what is considered his masterpiece, the novel, "darkness at noon", actually mediocre compared to the great memoirs that appeared after survivors of the trial were released after stalin died (szasz, loebl, london).

quality aside, it made an enormous splash at the time, comparable to solzhenitsyn 20 years later, exposing to the west the sheer diabolism of the soviet maneuvers to brand the east european communist heroes of wwII as cia spies in order to attain russian control. he was so disgusted by his embrace by the right that he turned away from politics to science writing and explorations of history and consciousness. was especially good at restoring the reputations of hungarian geniuses slandered by history.

the thirteenth tribe is his demonstration that east european jews did not migrate from spain after the expulsion by the inquisition, but rather from the east through the caucasus in the 8th and 9th centuries after the emperor of the khazars decided to institute a state religion by inviting christian, muslim, and jewish theologians to make competitive presentations. the jews won.

there's a killer novel by the slav milorad pavic, "dictionary of the khazars", that goes into imaginative detail about said competition.

the very great koestler book, shunned by left and right, is the second volume of his autobiography, called "the invisible writing", and which tells the story of his transformation from one on the communist international's chief propagandists to, with orwell, the chief theoretician of ethical opposition to stalinism.

[loafingcactus · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the end of the book Koestler claims that his life was not extraordinary- that any European intellectual of his era would be able to recount about the same experiences. Let's see- started out his journalistic career penniless in Palistine, sleeping on a dentist's couch that he rented for the nights and vacated during business hours, to successful editor in Germany until he was outed as a communist under Hitler, spent time traveling around communist Russia, enprisioned by Franco, and again by Vichy France, and again by Britian after fleeing France, allowed into America only under congressional order. Yup, standard issue life there.

His book is only so-so as introspection, though after reading several of his books I would call him as solid INTP and with that in mind his introspections can be somewhat meaningful. But the history is irreplaceable, and his first hand account of interactions with one political disaster after another is a warning every future generation should read.

[Alfrediux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic account of the life in soviet Russia during the early years of communism, from celebrated hungarian writer/journalist Arthur Koestler, this is the intermediate volume from a total of five that complete the author's autobiography, and it covers the period between the nazi's uprise in Germany, and the author's trip throughout all the regions of Communist Russia as a german journalist and member of the Comintern, and its a detailed portrait of one of the worst periods of misery and hunger in Russia during 1920's.

[Joshua]

Picks up after the Zeppelin flight, following the author through his time as a communist, imprisonment in Spain, and ex-communism.

Reading this, you get a sense of why the West was so "into" winning the Cold War: the specter of Communism lurks menacingly both in its physical violence as well as its "imprisonment of the mind".

I also have a soft spot for the authors descriptions of the life of poverty that he faced, walking miles to work from a hayloft, etc. An enjoyable read.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving memoire of a former commie. Great read for anyone who once believed in, and later grew disillusioned with, a powerful idea.

[Varmint · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second act in a life that seemed like an intellectual indiana jones. Reporter, novelist, spy, Koestler spent the 30s and 40s one step ahead of the nazi, and then the soviet secret police.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit frustrating at times, specifically when he wanders off towards the mysticism that would mark his later years, but the honesty and events make it worthwhile.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

An apparatchik wins a tour of the Soviet Union & sees the ugly truth of the "workers' paradise" for himself.

[Carmen Rodríguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant! In every possible way.