Arthur Koestler Livres

Dans ce roman inédit écrit en 1934, Arthur Koestler met en scène des enfants allemands placés dans un foyer français, L'Avenir. Leurs parents, déjà emprisonnés dans les camps de concentration ou eux-mêmes exilés, ont dû se séparer d'eux, ne pouvant plus subvenir à leurs besoins. Ces petits héros – Dédé le Voleur, Ullrich l'Opposition, Mathile aux Polypes – ont des jeux bien étranges : ils s'amusent à reproduire les débats qu'ils ont connus dans leurs familles. Ils élisent leurs représentants, organisent des réunions hebdomadaires, émettent des revendications, et créent un tribunal pour statuer sur le cas d'un voleur de chocolat... Dans ce récit teinté de surréalisme, l'auteur parvient à rendre avec acuité l'ambiance intellectuelle de l'époque, à la fois sarcastique, canaille et tragique. Il écrit ici l'un des premiers textes consacrés aux exactions de la SA en Allemagne, aux premiers départs pour les camps de concentration, aux angoisses des exilés. Cette dimension historique en fait un roman splendide et bouleversant.

Taken together, Arthur Koestler's volumes of autobiography constitute an unrivalled study of twentieth-century man and his dilemma. It puts in perspective his experiences in Franco's prisons under sentence of death and in concentration camps in Occupied France and ends with his escape in 1940 to England, where he found stability and a new home.

This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the Dark Ages became converted to Judaism. Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Khan, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western Jewry. To the general reader the Khazars, who flourished from the 7th to 11th century, may seem infinitely remote today. Yet they have a close and unexpected bearing on our world, which emerges as Koestler recounts the fascinating history of the ancient Khazar Empire. At about the time that Charlemagne was Emperor in the West. The Khazars' sway extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga, and they were instrumental in stopping the Muslim onslaught against Byzantium, the eastern jaw of the gigantic pincer movement that in the West swept across northern Africa and into Spain. Thereafter the Khazars found themselves in a precarious position between the two major world powers: the Eastern Roman Empire in Byzantium and the triumphant followers of Mohammed. As Koestler points out, the Khazars were the Third World of their day. They chose a surprising method of resisting both the Western pressure to become Christian and the Eastern to adopt Islam. Rejecting both, they converted to Judaism. Mr. Koestler speculates about the ultimate faith of the Khazars and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern Jewry. He produces detailed research to support a theory which could make the term 'anti-Semitism' become void of meaning

A new edition of Arthur Koestler's gripping tale of arrest, imprisonment, and subsequent escape to London from Nazi-occupied France.

In this penetrating selection of essays and reviews, Arthur Koestler roves from Indian politics to the paranormal, from materialism to mysticism. Whether he is addressing a learned society on education or psychiatry, discussing ESP, reporting the Fischer-Spassky chess championship or taking a step into the 1980s, Koestler is always controversial, forthright and stimulating — above all, compulsively readable. [Taken from the back cover]

The author examines the idea that we are at our most creative when rational thought is suspended-for example, in dreams and trancelike states.

The first volume of the remarkable autobiography of Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon. In 1931, Arthur Koestler joined the Communist Party, an event he felt to be second only in importance to his birth in shaping his destiny.

Drawing from his harrowing experiences as a political prisoner during the Spanish Civil War, the author delivers a powerful critique of capital punishment. Having faced execution by a firing squad, he reflects on the moral implications and human cost of such a system, shaped by the suffering of fellow inmates. Originally published in 1956, this work combines personal narrative with broader societal commentary, making it a poignant exploration of justice and inhumanity.