Book description
Arrow in the Blue is the first volume of Arthur Koestler's
autobiography. It covers the first 26 years of his life and ends with
his joining the Communist Party in 1931, an event he felt to be second
only in importance to his birth in shaping his destiny.
In the years before 1931, Arthur Koestler lived a tumultuous and
varied existence. He was a member of the duelling fraternity at the
University if Vienna; a collective farm worker in Galilee; a tramp and
street vendor in Haifa; the editor of a weekly paper in Cairo; the
foreign correspondent of the biggest continental newspaper chain in
Paris and the Middle East; a science editor in Berlin; and a member of
the North Pole expedition of the Graf Zeppelin.
Written with enormous zest, joie de vivre and frankness,
Arrow in the Blue is a fascinating self-portrait of a
remarkable young man at the heart of the events that shaped the
twentieth century.
The second volume of Arthur Koestler's autobiography is The
Invisible Writing.
Arthur Koestler was born in Budapest in 1905. He attended the
university of Vienna before working as a foreign correspondent in the
Middle East, Berlin and Paris. For six years he was an active member of
the Communist Party, and was captured by Franco in the Spanish Civil
War. In 1940 he came to England. He wrote
The Gladiators
in Hungarian,
Darkness at Noon
in German, and
Arrival and Departure
in English. He set up the Arthur Koestler Award (now the Koestler
Trust) which awards prizes for creative achievements to prisoners,
detainees and patients in special hospitals. He died in 1983 by suicide,
having frequently expressed a belief in the right to euthanasia.
