Arthur Koestler

Hungarian novelist, journalist, critic and essayist whose books dramatize political themes. Koestler wrote his novel "Darkness at Noon" in 1940 to express his disillusionment with the Communist Party. His book was made into a Broadway play by Sidney Kingsley in 1951. Koestler hated the play and sued the playwright in litigation which dragged on for years. A believer in psychic experiences, he established the Koestler Foundation to promote research in parapsychology and other fields and he founded a Chair of Parapsychology at the Edinburgh University. In his work, "Roots of Coincidence" in 1972, he made an attempt to describe extrasensory perception with a basis in quantum physics.

Koestler was the son of Hungarian industrialist and inventor Henrik Koestler and Adele (Jeiteles) Koestler. As a child, he grew up without any religious instruction from his Jewish parents. In 1922, he went to the University of Vienna and became interested in the Zionist movement. Before finishing his degree, he left to Palestine where he worked as a farm laborer. From there, he worked as a Jerusalem-based reporter for a German newspaper. In 1929, he left to Paris and then to Berlin where he became the science editor of "Vossische Zeitung." In 1931, he joined the communist party and would later write about his experiences in "Arrow in the Blue." He was with the German Communist Party for seven years but broke with the movement during the Moscow trials. While participating in the Spanish Civil War, he captured by Franco forces and sentenced to death. Rescued from a Seville jail by the British Foreign Office, he claimed to have a mystical liberation while imprisoned and wrote his account in "Spanish Testament," 1937. In 1940, he was arrested by the Vichy government. Released from prison, he moved to England and wrote his first book in English, his autobiography, "The Scum of the Earth," 1941.

Koestler garnered international success with his "Darkness at Noon," 1940.