Arthur Koestler - Böcker

A brilliant new translation of Koestler's long-lost original manuscript. A chilling and unforgettable 20th century classic.From a prison cell in an unnamed country run by a totalitarian government Rubashov reflects. Once a powerful player in the regime, mercilessly dispensing with anyone who got in the way of his party’s aims, Rubashov has had the tables turned on him. He has been arrested and he’ll be interrogated, probably tortured and certainly executed.Darkness at Noon is as gripping as a thriller and a seminal work of twentieth-century literature. Published in Great Britain in 1940, it was feted by George Orwell, went on to be translated into thirty languages and is considered the finest work of pre-eminent European master, Arthur Koestler. And yet the novel’s worldwide reputation has, for over seventy years, been based on the first incomplete and inexpert English translation – Koestler’s original manuscript was lost when he fled the German occupation of Paris in 1940.In 2016, a student discovered that long-lost manuscript in a Zurich archive. At last, with the publication of this new translation of the rediscovered original, Koestler’s masterpiece can be experienced afresh and in its entirety for the first time.THE NEW TRANSLATION BY PHILIP BOEHM

Arthur Koestler's extraordinary history of humanity's changing vision of the universeIn this masterly synthesis, Arthur Koestler cuts through the sterile distinction between 'sciences' and 'humanities' to bring to life the whole history of cosmology from the Babylonians to Newton. He shows how the tragic split between science and religion arose and how, in particular, the modern world-view replaced the medieval world-view in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. He also provides vivid and judicious pen-portraits of a string of great scientists and makes clear the role that political bias and unconscious prejudice played in their creativity.

Darkness at Noon is set in an unnamed country ruled by a totalitarian government. Rubashov, once a powerful player in the regime, finds the tables turned on him when he is arrested and tried for treason. His reflections on his previous life and his experiences in prison form the heart of this moving and though-provoking masterpiece.

The second volume of the remarkable autobiography of Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon.Taken together, Arthur Koestler's volumes of autobiography constitute an unrivalled study of a twentieth-century life. The Invisible Writing picks up where the first volume, Arrow in the Blue, ended, with Koestler joining the Communist Party. This second volume goes on to detail some of the most important, gruelling and electrifying 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 tells of how he survived 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.

The story of Koestler's imprisonment in France in 1940, his escape and his extraordinary and adventurous journey to the safety of London, which unfolds like some travel nightmare by Kafka. The 'scum of the earth' are those heroic individuals, like Koestler himself, who had fought the tide of fascism and come to live in liberal France under the mistaken impression that they would be safe.

The first volume of the remarkable autobiography of Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon.In 1931, Arthur Koestler joined the Communist Party, an event he felt to be second only in importance to his birth in shaping his destiny. Before that point, he lived a tumultuous and varied existence. He was a member of the duelling fraternity at the University of Vienna; a collective farm worker in Galilee; a tramp and street vendor in Haifa; the editor of a weekly paper in Cairo; the foreign correspondent of the biggest continental newspaper chain in Paris and the Middle East; a science editor in Berlin; and a member of the North Pole expedition of the Graf Zeppelin. Written with enormous zest, joie de vivre and frankness, Arrow in the Blue is a fascinating self-portrait of a remarkable young man at the heart of the events that shaped the twentieth century. The second volume of Arthur Koestler's autobiography is The Invisible Writing.