Arthur Koestler Biography and List of Works

Hungarian born British novelist, journalist, and critic, best known for his novel DARKNESS AT NOON (1940), which reflects his break with the Communist Party, and his ideological rebirth. From 1937 Koestler was one of the main representatives of politically active European authors. Since 1956 he focused mainly on questions of science and mysticism.

"All great works of literature contain variations and combinations, overt or implied, of such archetypal conflicts inherent in the condition of man, which first occur in the symbols of mythology, and are restated in the particular idiom of each culture and period. All literature, wrote Gerhart Hauptmann, is 'the distant echo of the primitive world behind the veil of words'; and the action of a drama or novel is always the distant echo of some ancestral action behind the veil of the period's costumes and conventions."
(from The Act of Creation, 1964)

Koestler was born in Budapest as the son of Henrik K. Koestler, an industrialist and inventor, and Adele (Jeiteles) Koestler. Although his parents were Jewish, he grew up without any religious tradition. In 1922 he entered the University of Vienna (1922-26), and became attracted to the Zionist movement. Koestler left for the Palestine in 1926 without completing his degree. First he worked as a farm labourer and then as a Jerusalem-based correspondent for German newspapers. In 1929 he was transferred to Paris, a year later to Berlin where he became science editor of Vossische Zeitung and foreign editor of B.Z. am Mittag.

From 1932 to 1938 Koestler was a member of the German Communist Party, but left the party during the Moscow trials. He lived in France in 1932-36, earning his living as a free-lance journalist. In Paris he edited the anti-Hitler and anti-Stalin weekly Zukunft.

During the Spanish Civil War Koestler was captured by the Franco forces and was under sentence of death in a Seville jail. The British Foreign Office, however, managed to arrange for his release. In Seville he experienced a mystical liberation from mundane cares and depicted it in SPANISH TESTAMENT (1937), rewritten as DIALOGUE WITH DEATH (1942). From 1936 to 1939 he was a correspondent for the News Chronicle. In 1940 he was arrested and interned in Le Vernet under the Vichy government. After his release, Koestler moved to England, and wrote his first book in English, THE SCUM OF THE EARTH (1941), an autobiography. He served in the British Pioneer Corps (1941-42) and was employed by the Ministry of Information and BBC. In 1945 Koestler became a British subject. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 19723 and a Companion of Literature in 1974.

Koestler made his international breakthrough as a writer with Darkness at Noon. Its story depicted an old idealistic Bolshevik, Rubashov, who is imprisoned and persuaded to confess crimes 'against the state', of which he is innocent. The book was based partly on the writer's own experiences a prisoner and on Stalin's trials. It revealed the totalitarian system and the decay of the Russian Revolution. The novel is considered one of the most powerful political fictions of the century and it was adapted for the Broadway stage by Sidney Kingsley in 1951. Among Koestler's other works about Stalinism and Communism are THE YOGI AND THE COMMISSAR (1945), one of the first Cold War tracts, THE GOD THAT FAILED (1949). His memoirs, ARROW IN THE BLUE (1951) and THE INVISIBLE WRITING (1954), analysed the true-believer syndrome.

From the 1950s Koestler published scientific and philosophical books. In the preface to his book of essays TRAIL OF THE DINOSAUR (1955), Koestler declared his literary-political career over. During 1958 and 1959 he travelled to India and Japan, in order to discover whether the East could offer a spiritual aid to the West. To his disappointment, he did not find what he was looking for and reported on his failure in THE LOTUS AND THE ROBOT (1960). Koestler's article about Anglo-American 'drug culture, 'Return Trip to Nirvana' appeared in Sunday Telegraph in 1967 and challenged Aldous Huxley's defence of drugs. He experimented at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor with psilocybin and compared its effect to his vision with Walt Disney's Fantasia. "I profoundly admire Aldous Huxley, both for his philosophy and uncompromising sincerity. But I disagree with his advocacy of 'the chemical opening of doors into the Other World', and with his belief that drugs can procure 'what Catholic theologians call a gratuitous grace'. Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one's own nervous system."

Facing incurable illness, and as a lifelong advocate of euthanasia, Koestler took his own life with his wife. He died of a drug overdose in 1983 (death reported on March 3). - Koestler was married three times: Dorothy Asher (1935-50), Mamaine Paget (1950-52), and Cyhthia Jefferies (1965-83)

Throughout his life Koestler had psychic experiences, though he maintained that he was not himself psychic. He established The Koestler Foundation, which exists to promote research in parapsychology and other fields. In his will Koestler left his entire property to found a Chair of Parapsychology at the Edinburgh University. Koestler's best-know scientific publications from the 1970s are ROOTS OF COINCIDENCE (1972), an attempt to provide extrasensory perception with a basis in quantum physics, and THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE (1973), where he related his study of coincidences to the 'synchronicity' hypotheses of Carl Jung and Kammerer, a zoologist wrongly convicted of fraud because he seemed to have discovered an exception to the rule, that acquired characteristics cannot be inherited.

For further reading: Arthur Koestler by J. Atkins (1956); Chronicles of Conscience: A Study of Arthur Koestler and George Orwell by J. Calder (1968); Arthur Koestler: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. by M.A. Sperber (1977); Arthur Koestler by S.A. Pearson (1978); Koestler by I Hamilton (1982); Arthur Koestler by G. Mikes (1983); Arthur Koestler by M. Levene (1984); Living with Koestler with M. Koestler (1985); Arthur Koestler. A Guide to Research (1987) - Note: David Cesarani claims in his book The Homeless Mind (1998), that Koestler raped several women in the 1950s (from the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, 31.12.1198). After the publication of this information Koestler's statue at the Edinburgh University was removed to safer place to avoid vandalistic attacks. - Paranormal and psychic phenomena, see also: Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce

SPANISH TESTAMENT, (1937)
THE HEEL OF ACHILLES, (1974)
THE THIRTEENTH TRIBE, (1976)
LIFE AFTER DEATH, (1976)
JANUS - A SUMMING UP, (1978)
BRICKS TO BABEL, (1980)
STRANGER IN THE SQUARE, (1980)