Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler was born in Budapest in 1905 into a Jewish family and grew up there and in Vienna, where he studied engineering. He went to Palestine in 1926, then worked as a newspaper correspondent in the Middle East, Paris and Berlin, and in 1931 joined the German Communist Party. During the Spanish Civil War he was captured by Franco's forces and held under sentence of death before being released in 1937 after a British campaign. He left the Communist Party in 1938, disillusioned by Stalin's purges and show trials. His novel Darkness at Noon (1940) tells of Rubashov, an old revolutionary imprisoned and interrogated by the party he served, and it became one of the most influential political novels of the century. After internment in France in 1940 he escaped to Britain, where he settled and became a British citizen. His later books ranged widely, including The Sleepwalkers on the history of astronomy. He died in London in 1983.

Arthur Koestler is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Jewish by birth but did not practice the religion. Source: Wikipedia