Arthur Koestler

He had been married thrice, the first two of his marriages ending in divorce. He had a daughter named Christina, born as a result of his affair with Janine Graetz.

During his later years, he suffered from Parkinson’s disease and leukaemia. He did not want to suffer any indignities towards the end of his life, so he committed suicide along with his wife in 1983.

Arthur Koestler was born in Budapest, Hungary, as the only son of Henrik Koestler, an industrialist and inventor, and Adele. His parents were Jews though Koestler himself renounced religion later on.

He enrolled in the University of Vienna in 1922 for a degree in engineering. There he became attracted to the Zionist movement. His father’s business failed and he could not pay his college fees. Thus, he was expelled before he could complete his degree.

In 1926, he left for Palestine to look for a job. At first he could find only a menial job as a farm labourer, but then he was selected as a Jerusalem-based correspondent for German Newspapers.

Over the next two years he worked and traveled extensively, specializing in political writing which established his reputation as a journalist. In 1929, he was appointed to the bureau of the Ullstein News Service and in 1931 he became the science editor of Vossische Zeitung.

In 1937, he wrote his first memoir, ‘Spanish Testament’, describing his experiences as a prisoner sentenced to death by the National Forces of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War. He was eventually exchanged for a ‘high value’ Nationalist prisoner held by the Loyalists.

He published his first novel ‘The Gladiators‘ in 1939. It ostensibly dealt with the Spartacus revolt in the Roman Republic though it was actually an allegory for the corrupt practices involved in Stalin’s socialism.

After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Koestler was detained for several months in Le Vernet Internment Camp in France. He was released in early 1940 due to strong British pressure.

His political novel ‘Darkness at Noon’ published in 1940 is his best known work. The book reflected his disillusionment with communism in the Soviet Union. It is one of the most popular anti-communist books ever written.

His second memoir, ‘Scum of the Earth’ (1941), in which he described his life as a political prisoner in the Le Vernet Concentration Camp in France and his eventual escape, earned many positive reviews from critics.