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asuph's review
5.0
"What a life!" could really be the three word review of this amazing autobiography installment by Koestler. This is second part in the three part autobiography and probably the meatiest. I say probably, as I still haven't read the third, but considering that this covers historically the most interesting time in the life of modern Europe, I doubt his life could have been more eventful in the latter years.
I've been an unabashed fan of Koestler since I first read The Sleepwalkers. It got better with Darkness at Noon. Koestler is an amazing writer -- not because of style, but content. That pretty much holds good for his autobiography as well. Koestler's life is a like a miniature version of Europe in the pre and post communist wave. And he seems to have been everywhere at the right time (in the context of history -- although not in terms of personal safety for sure). Palestine, Russia, France, Spain, England ...
Koestler would, obviously, have it no other way. After being saved from a possible execution in Spain, and being interned in France as enemy alien, Koestler still didn't want to take a safe exit out of Europe:
It's a truly remarkable life. And yet what binds the book together is not the action, but the intellectual journey that begun in Arrow In The Blue -- the chronicles of his growing disillusionment with the Communist party and politics, to his eventual break with the party.
As is so typical of the book, the restless narrator tells the story of his life, and the life of restless Europe, and of his ideological journey, through the politically/intellectually divided Europe. There is so much to take in in Koestler that it's a shame that he is so hard to find in bookshops, online or offline.
NB: It's interesting that I started this book on the even of the last new year and finished it on the eve of this.
I've been an unabashed fan of Koestler since I first read The Sleepwalkers. It got better with Darkness at Noon. Koestler is an amazing writer -- not because of style, but content. That pretty much holds good for his autobiography as well. Koestler's life is a like a miniature version of Europe in the pre and post communist wave. And he seems to have been everywhere at the right time (in the context of history -- although not in terms of personal safety for sure). Palestine, Russia, France, Spain, England ...
Koestler would, obviously, have it no other way. After being saved from a possible execution in Spain, and being interned in France as enemy alien, Koestler still didn't want to take a safe exit out of Europe:
And I also knew that my roots were in Europe, that I belonged to Europe, and that if Europe went down, survival became pointless, and I would rather go down with her than take refuge in a country which no longer meant anything but a refuge. This resolution was actually put to the test when France fell, and when, instead of heading for Palestine or still neutral America, I made my escape to England—which led to another stretch of solitary confinement in a London prison during the blitz. Yet even that prison-cell in Pentonville meant Europe, my home.
It's a truly remarkable life. And yet what binds the book together is not the action, but the intellectual journey that begun in Arrow In The Blue -- the chronicles of his growing disillusionment with the Communist party and politics, to his eventual break with the party.
As is so typical of the book, the restless narrator tells the story of his life, and the life of restless Europe, and of his ideological journey, through the politically/intellectually divided Europe. There is so much to take in in Koestler that it's a shame that he is so hard to find in bookshops, online or offline.
NB: It's interesting that I started this book on the even of the last new year and finished it on the eve of this.
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