The Lotus and the Robot

Health, Fitness & Dieting

KOESTLER, ARTHUR

Exercise & Fitness

NY MacMillan 1960

This was the third novel of Arthur Koestler's trilogy on ends and means - the other two are THE GLADIATORS and DARKNESS AT NOON - and the first he wrote in English. The central theme is the conflict between morality and expediency, and in this novel Koestler worked it out in terms of individual psychology. Peter Slavek starts out as a brave young revolutionary, but suffers a breakdown. On the analyst's couch he is made to discover, in Koestler's own words, 'that his crusading zeal was derived from unconscious guilt'.

Arrival and Departure

Literature & Fiction

MacMillan Publishing Company

"Darkness at Noon is a novel by Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government that he had helped to create. The novel is set in 1938 during the Stalinist Great Purge and Moscow show trials. Despite being based on real events, the novel does not name either Russia or the USSR, and tends to use generic terms to describe people and organizations: for example the Soviet government is referred to as "the Party" and Nazi Germany is referred to as "the Dictatorship". Joseph Stalin is represented by "Number One", a menacing dictator. The novel expresses the author's disillusionment with the Soviet Union's version of Communism at the outset of World War II. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Darkness at Noon number eight on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century." (Ground Zero Books)

Darkness at Noon

Literary

Scribner

N. S. Rubashov, an old guard Communist, falls victim to an unnamed government; with outstanding psychological insight, Koestler traces his story through arrest, imprisonment and trail in a classic novel which, when first published, famously drew attention to the nature of Stalin's regime.

United States

Arthur Koestler's first novel, set in the late Roman Republic, tells the story of the revolt of Spartacus and man's search for Utopia. The first of three novels concerned with the 'ethics of revolution', it addresses the age-old debate of whether the end justifies the means, an argument continued in his classic novels Darkness at Noon and Arrival and Departure.

The Gladiators

Self-Help

Death & Grief

Macmillan

Fiction novel. Set in Palestine where Jews, Arabs, British officials and an American journalist all take part in conflicting forces. The objective is to establish a agricultural commune in Palestine. Story revolves around the resistance met during this attempt. All the elements are present; racism, love, torture, marriage, disillusionment and terrorism. Written in 1946 and sounds all too familiar to the recent years.

Thieves in the Night: Chronicle of an Experiment (Danube Edition)

Macmillan Company

Gladiators

Classics

Arrow (A Division of Random House Group)

Dialogue With Death

Biographies & Memoirs

RANDOM HOUSE UK

This was the first book that Arthur Koestler wrote in English. It starts at the beginning of World War II when he was living in the South of France, working on "Darkness at Noon". After retreating to Paris, he was imprisoned as an undesirable alien. Even though he had been a crusader against fascism, he and many other anti-Nazis, were treated as enemies and their internment was brutal. The worst of his imprisonment was at Vernet, where prisoners had to sleep without blankets in 20 degrees of frost, and where he finally collapsed during a session of forced labour. Some of his fellow internees were eventually handed over to Nazi executioners. Koestler ponders on the collapse of pride and honour in France and he asks "Was the tragedy of France merely accidental, due to an unfortunate constellation? Or was it due to the still undiscovered, secret laws of the rise and decline of races and nations?"

Scum of the earth; (Danube edition)

Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.

This selection of essays, book-reviews, broadcast talks and papers delivered to learned societies reflects the extraordinary breadth of Arthur Koestler’s interests. From the trial of Galileo to the pleasures of canoeing down the Loire, from a detailed examination of the ‘memory’ of flatworms to an equally detailed examination of the futility of quarantining dogs, the author writes about a vast range of subjects which occupied his attention in the twelve years (1955-1967) covered by this collection.  Those were the years that saw, among many other works, the publication of his great trilogy about the mind of man: THE SLEEPWALKERS, THE ACT OF CREATION, and THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE. It is not surprising therefore, that many of these essays elaborate certain aspects of arguments which occur in those books. They could, as the author says in his Preface, ‘be called variations on certain themes’, and the selection of books reviewed also reveals a certain thematic coherence.  There is, however, a great deal of miscellaneous material, quite different in nature from Koestler’s scientific preoccupations, with which he has been so closely associated in recent years. This includes the subjects of his ‘crusades’, such as the campaign for the abolition of hanging, the scandal of our quarantine laws, some escapist travel essays, and some controversies in which he became engaged.  Like everything Koestler writes, DRINKERS OF INFINITY not only stimulates the mind, but gives the greatest pleasure to the reader while doing so.

Drinkers of infinity: Essays 1955-1967

Hutchinson Co Ltd

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