Author

Arthur Koestler

1905-1983 · Hungarian-born British novelist and essayist, author of Darkness at Noon

Short biography: Arthur Koestler in Great Lives

About Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) was a Hungarian-born writer who wrote in German and later in English. He worked as a journalist in the Middle East, Paris and Berlin, joined the German Communist Party in 1931, and was imprisoned and sentenced to death by Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War before being released in a prisoner exchange, an experience recorded in Dialogue with Death. He left the Communist Party in 1938. After Darkness at Noon he settled in Britain, wrote essays, memoirs and books on science and creativity such as The Sleepwalkers, and died in London in 1983.

Notable works

On this site

Darkness at Noon

Arthur Koestler

1940 · Early 20th Century · Novel

Darkness at Noon is a novel about the arrest, interrogation and execution of Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov, a veteran revolutionary and former People's Commissar in an unnamed country ruled by a single party and its leader, known only as No. 1. The setting is never named, but the novel is plainly modeled on the Soviet Union during Stalin's purges and the Moscow show trials of 1936 to 1938.

Power / PoliticsJustice LawGuilt Sin