Koestler : the literary and political odyssey of a twentieth-century skeptic / Michael Scammell.
Scammell, Michael.
2009
PR6021.O4 Z84 2009 (Mapit)
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Title
Koestler : the literary and political odyssey of a twentieth-century skeptic / Michael Scammell.
Author
Scammell, Michael.
Edition
1st ed.
ISBN
9780394576305 (alk. paper)
0394576306 (alk. paper)
Publication Details
New York : Random House, c2009.
Language
English
Description
xxi, 689 p., [16] p. of plates : ill., ports., geneal. table ; 25 cm.
Call Number
PR6021.O4 Z84 2009
Dewey Decimal Classification
828/.91209 B
Summary
The first authorized biography of one of the most influential and controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century, based on new research and full access to its subject's papers. Best known as the creator of the classic anti-Communist novel Darkness at Noon, Koestler is here revealed as a man whose personal life was as astonishing as his literary accomplishments. The young Hungarian Jew whose experience of anti-Semitism and devotion to Zionism provoked him to move to Palestine; the foreign correspondent who risked his life from the North Pole to Franco's Spain; the committed Communist for whom the brutal truth of Stalin's show trials inspired the angry novel that became an instant classic in 1940; the escape from occupied France by joining the Foreign Legion and his bluffing his way illegally to England, where his controversial 1943 novel Arrival and Departure was the first to portray Hitler's Final Solution. Scammell also gives a full account of the author's voluminous writings, making the case that the autobiographies and essays are fit to stand beside Darkness at Noon as works of lasting literary value.--From publisher description.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Record Appears in
On-Campus Resources > Books
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Part One: A Long Apprenticeship - The Author as Journalist (1905-1936)
Chapter 1: Beginnings
Chapter 2: A Budapest Childhood
Chapter 3: Rise, Jew, Rise
Chapter 4: Zionist
Chapter 5: A Runaway and a Fugitive
Chapter 6: First Steps in Journalism
Chapter 7: Hello To Berlin
Chapter 8: In the Gale of History
Chapter 9: Red Days
Chapter 10: Anti-Fascist Crusader
Chapter 11: Marking Time
Chapter 12: Prisoner of Franco
Chapter 13: Turning Point
Part Two: Fame and Infamy - The Author as Novelist (1936-1946)
Chapter 14: The God That Failed
Chapter 15: No New Certainties
Chapter 16: Darkness Visible
Chapter 17: Scum of the Earth
Chapter 18: Darkness Unveiled
Chapter 19: In Crumpled Battledress
Chapter 20: The Novelists Temptations
Chapter 21: Identity Crisis
Chapter 22: Commissar or Yogi?
Chapter 23: Return to Palestine
Chapter 24: Welsh Interlude
Chapter 25: The Logic of the Ice Age
Part Three: Lost Illusions - The Author Activist (1946-1959)
Chapter 26: Adventures among the Existentialists
Chapter 27: French Lessons
Chapter 28: Discovering America
Chapter 29: Farewell to Zionism
Chapter 30: A Married Man
Chapter 31: To the Barricades
Chapter 32: The Congress for Cultural Freedom
Chapter 33: Back to the USA
Chapter 34: Politically Unreliable
Chapter 35: The Language of Destiny
Chapter 36: The Phantom Chase
Chapter 37: I Killed Her
Chapter 38: Cassandra Grows Hoarse
Chapter 39: Matters of Life and Death
Part Four: Astride the Two Cultures - The Author as Polymath (1959-1983)
Chapter 40: Cosmic Reporter
Chapter 41: The Squire of Alpbach
Chapter 42: Retreat From Rationalism?
Chapter 43: A Naive and Skeptical Disposition
Chapter 44: Seeking a Cure
Chapter 45: Wunderkind
Chapter 46: Chance Governs All
Chapter 47: The Koestler Problem
Chapter 48: An Easy Way of Dying

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