The Invisible Writing [Paperback]

Arthur Koestler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 22, 2005

The second volume is in Koestler’s own words “a typical case history of a member of the educated middle classes of Central Europe in our time.” We see him in Germany, Russia, England, France and Spain, working for the cause he believed in until his eventual break with Communism in 1938. It ends with his escape from Occupied France in 1940 to England, where he found a new home. An epilogue brings the story up to 1953.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

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. Arthur Koestler spent several months in a death cell during the Spanish Civil War, was sent in 1939 to a French concentration camp, then joined the Foreign Legion and escaped to England in 1940. He died in 1983 by suicide, having frequently expressed a belief in the right to euthanasia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Vintage Books (November 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099490684
• ISBN-13: 978-0099490685
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 7.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,066,009 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Budapest in 1905, educated in Vienna, Arthur Koestler immersed himself in the major ideological and social conflicts of his time. A communist during the 1930s, and visitor for a time in the Soviet Union, he became disillusioned with the Party and left it in 1938. Later that year in Spain, he was captured by the Fascist forces under Franco, and sentenced to death. Released through the last-minute intervention of the British government, he went to France where, the following year, he again was arrested for his political views. Released in 1940, he went to England, where he made his home. His novels, reportage, autobiographical works, and political and cultural writings established him as an important commentator on the dilemmas of the 20th century. He died in 1983.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Part 2 of Koestler's autobiography, July 6, 2007

By 

Michael "Michael" (Hamburg, Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Invisible Writing (Paperback)

First of all, it's only worth reading this book if you've read Part 1, Arrow in the Blue. If you've already done that, you're probably thirsting for Part 2, but I must frankly admit that you may find Arrow in the Blue runs at a deeper level than The Invisible Writing, which is the account of his life from 1932-40 (giving just a short outline of the experiences already covered in greater detail in Dialogue with Death and Scum of the Earth), without as much philosophical commentary. I've seldom read two parts of a book which were so different in style, but they're equally enjoyable.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a pity so few read Koestler today, January 6, 2012

By 

Mladen Andrijasevic (Israel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Invisible Writing (Paperback)

I cannot remember any other book I have recently read which so deeply touched me than this one. Perhaps Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate. It could be so because I myself went trough similar experiences in the USSR in the nineteen seventies Koestler went through in the nineteen thirties. He was there during the peak of the Ukrainian famine 1932-1933 which claimed several million victims, one of the most horrific periods in Soviet history ( brilliantly demonstrated in Grossman's Everything Flows ), so my comparison may seem inappropriate, yet it is his reaction to the reality of everyday Soviet life which reminded me of my own.

The crux of the whole book is Koestler's disappointment with Communism and the agonizingly slow and painful process to change the mindset of a true believer, himself. The incredible counter arguments one comes up with to explain the Soviet excesses and to justify the unjustifiable are so vivid that they can be applied today to the West's attitude towards Islamist terror almost without change. For this reason alone The Invisible Writing should be widely read, and not read only by nostalgic men in their 50s and students of political science, as one critic put it .

Sometimes a paragraph in a book illustrates better what transpired in a certain historical period than all the books on history one reads. Here is Koestler's take on German women, 1932:

During the carnival season Of 1932, Ehrendorf went to a dance and picked up a tall, pretty blonde. She wore a large swastika brooch on her breast, was about nineteen or twenty, gay, uninhibited and brimful of healthy animal spirits-in short, the ideal Hitler-Madchen of the Brave New World. After the dance, Ehrendorf persuaded her to go back with him to his flat, where she met his advances more than half-way. Then, at the climactic moment, the girl raised herself on one elbow, stretched out the other arm in the Roman salute, and breathed in a dying voice a fervent 'Heil Hitler'. Poor Ehrendorf nearly had a stroke. When he had recovered, the blonde sweetie explained to him that she and a bunch of her girl friends had taken a solemn vow, pledging themselves 'to remember the Fuehrer every time at the most sacred moment in a woman's life'.