Buy used: $17.99

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery Tuesday, May 30 on orders shipped by Amazon over $25

Or fastest delivery Wednesday, May 24. Order within 22 hrs 9 mins

Select delivery location

Used: Acceptable | Details

Sold by -OnTimeBooks-

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See this image

Follow the Author

Arthur Koestler

The Call Girls Hardcover – January 1, 1973

by Arthur Koestler (Author)

3.9 21 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$5.19

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$17.99

$93.63

$4.50

Paperback, Import

"Please retry"

$6.56

—

$4.19

Mass Market Paperback

"Please retry"

$8.97

—

$4.99

Kindle
$5.19 Read with Our Free App
Hardcover
$17.99

18 Used from $4.50 1 New from $93.63 7 Collectible from $9.50
Paperback
$6.56

4 Used from $4.19
Mass Market Paperback
$8.97

3 Used from $4.99

A TRAGI-COMEDY.

Print length

167 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House
Publication date

January 1, 1973
ISBN-10

0394484355
ISBN-13

978-0394484358
See all details

Arthur Koestler
940
Paperback
in History of Judaism
9 offers from $10.89
Arthur Koestler
666
Paperback
18 offers from $5.56
Arthur Koestler
1,514
Paperback
87 offers from $4.84
Arthur Koestler
104
Paperback
25 offers from $14.04
Arthur Koestler
187
Paperback
52 offers from $2.25
Arthur Koestler
76
Hardcover
12 offers from $33.99

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House; First Edition (January 1, 1973)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 167 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0394484355
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0394484358
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.01 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #3,864,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,463,563 in Literature & Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
3.9 21 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Arthur Koestler

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

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

3.9 out of 5

21 global ratings

5 star		50%
4 star		9%
3 star		26%
2 star		15%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

smarmer

Brilliant novel about the utopians

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 20, 2014

Verified Purchase

Do you ever wonder what goes on at Davos or other meetings of those high minded folks who think they have all the solutions that will make the world perfect?

This novella, slightly dated in its content but absolutely up to date in terms of process, describes what the intellectual call girls of those dedicated utopians do at such conferences and what is truly behind their pronouncements and nostrums.

By casting this as a novel Koestler illustrates rather than pontificates about the hollowness and pedantry of those allegedly superior beings whose declarations and recommendations we are supposed to accept with awe and gratitude. After reading this book I believe your attitude toward what the superior "smart folks" at various think tanks and institutes and high end retreats will change and will, hopefully, come down to earth.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Human being is thief

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 2, 2016

Verified Purchase

Koestler books are Greatest Books

Helpful

Jordan Bell

Koestler's frustration with conferences

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 2, 2014

This is not a great novel. One character, Wyndham, is repeatedly described as "tittering", one woman has the epithet of having a "shaved neck", Sir Evelyn Blood too frequently has bloodshot eyes, and often when von Halder is mentioned he is ruffling his white hair. (However, these instances of bad writing could have been easily fixed by strict editing.)

I think of this book as an attempt to express frustration with how public intellectuals do their business. Beyond liking this novel because it was fun to read or because I thought the particular topics Koestler talks about are important, I like it as an instance of communicating ideas through a novel, perhaps like Ayn Rand's books.

If one wants to further study this book, it is worth noting that in June 1968 there was a conference held in Alpbach, Tyrol, whose proceedings were published under the title "The Alpbach Symposium: Beyond Reductionism", edited by Koestler and the neuroscientist J. R. Smythies. This conference is mentioned in Mary Catherine Bateson's "With a Daughter's Eye" (which I haven't read, but which I found when trying to sort out whether this book was based on some actual conference).

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

XKXXKKXKKXK

Definitely worth adding to your Koestler collection

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 25, 2008

I enjoyed the book immensely. A "tragi-comedy" about a group of pretensious experts attempting to offer their own ideas of improving humanity's condition, all while falling victim to the all-too-human impulses they are trying to remedy. Here are the liner notes:

Call Girls is a funny yet frightening view of mankind's chance for survival. At a Swiss alpine village gather the "call girls"- distinguished scientists, philosophers, and sociologists who spend much of their professional lives flying from one international symposium to another. They're here to discuss "Approaches To Survival", and their task is to analyze the causes of man's predicament, diagnose his condition, and explore possible remedies. During the one-week symposium they present papers embodying many current theories of man- as an aggressor, a set of mechanical responses, a reservoir of psychic powers- and ironically, their own jealousies, suspicions, and aggressions reveal them as a microcosm of the very problems they are trying to solve.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Imaginary Albums

I love Koestler. Don't start here.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 7, 2004

The Call-Girls is a novel evidently intended as a "popularization" -- since people like to read novels! -- of ideas that Koestler covered more exhaustively in his book-length essays, in particular The Ghost in the Machine and Janus: A Summing Up. The fictional structure is really little more than a skeletal frame into which Koestler has dumped (sometimes verbatim) arguments that he formulated elsewhere: A dozen "quirky" professor-types (one giggles, one blushes, one's outspoken and gay, one does ten things at once, etc.) -- the jetsetting symposia-attending call-girls of the title -- come together in Switzerland to discuss how mankind is to be saved from itself. So that's what they do. As story, this is less than gripping; and either of the abovementioned nonfiction titles will serve as a better introduction to Koestler's ideas, which ARE gripping.

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

Carl Bergstrom

Is it live or is it....?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 1, 2000

As an academic novel, Koestler's Call Girls has relatively little to recommend it, perhaps in part because it cuts so close the bone. Reading Koester's description of a small conference of academic "call girls" is all too similar to the real thing. The pompous posturing and politicking of such a group is every bit as tedious on the printed page as it is in person. If one is looking for an enjoyable academic satire, try David Lodge's Changing Places or Small World, try Richard Russo's Straight Man, or even try Jane Smiley's Moo; for a somewhat more serious expose, try Carl Djerassi's Cantor's Dilemma.
Not that I wish to dismiss this work entirely; Koestler's novel is far more successful as a bleak commentary on the direction of the human race, mostly due to the two brilliant short pieces which frame the centeral academic tale. These pieces remaing brilliant and haunting despite the dry centerpiece.

11 people found this helpful

Helpful

Douglas Pressman (Pressman@cmc.cz)

Hilarious Parody of Academic Jet-Setters

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 16, 1999

Koestler, best known for "Darkness at Noon", left us a satire of modern academe easily on a par with "White Noise". The book revolves around the smarmy and cynical personalities of several distinguished academics who are attending a conference, and offers readers a novel of ideas which asks disturbing questions about the relationship of intellectuals to society.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

AK

Most perceptive description of a scientific conference I have yet read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 19, 2010

Verified Purchase

The book is simply brilliant. Koestler manages to play the role of an impartial observer, while it is clear all along that he has enough experience to speak as an insider on the comings and goings of the academic conference circuit. The characterisation of the participants is simply outstanding, the author being both kind and revealing of hteir motivations and foibles.

Another impressive aspect was how comfortable he was with all the subject matters being presented / discussed by his protagonists, showing a rare intellect and breadth of interest - in my experience most academics tend to find themselves on pretty thin ice, as soon as even a veneer of interdisciplinarity enters the equation.

Some of the topics chosen such as immediate steps for population control, both in terms of size (limiting the number of children) as well as governmental control of the populations under their aegis through suggestion / chemical methods must have been pretty risque when the book was released and would raise hackles in debates even now, more than three decades later.

A final aspect I thought was extremely well managed, even if only in passing / background, was the rise of tourism in Alpine Europe (the conference takes place in a small mountain village in either Austria or Switzerland, as far as I could tell) and the societal impact of this development. There is the obvious positive of increased wealth but there is also the complete hierarchical change between professions / traditional pillars of society and the farmers, especially the early adopters of tourism.

In my opinion anyone who has ever attended a scientific conference and is sufficiently honest about it will immediately recognise both the atmosphere and the autenthicity of the characters and enjoy this immensely.

One person found this helpful

RSP

Slightly interesting and mostly harmless.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 4, 2017

Verified Purchase

The introduction is worth the price of the book. The rest of it left me asking "what's the point?". I was an academic for some 30 years but I have never been to a conference like the one described in this book but then I wasn't a social scientist! Normally I like Koestler, but this is not his normal style. It's so easy to set one protagonist up against another in a series of fictitious debates/arguments but obviously fictional characters have no free will and have to do the bidding of the author. Maybe that's the whole point. If so, the introduction is all you need.

E N M

Very good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 8, 2017

Verified Purchase

Great novel from Koestler !!!
Ironic and pessimistic .

See all reviews

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers	6pm Score deals on fashion brands	AbeBooks Books, art & collectibles	ACX Audiobook Publishing Made Easy	Sell on Amazon Start a Selling Account

Amazon Business Everything For Your Business	Amazon Fresh Groceries & More Right To Your Door	AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally	Home Services Experienced Pros Happiness Guarantee	Amazon Ignite Sell your original Digital Educational Resources	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Audible Listen to Books & Original Audio Performances	Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	Box Office Mojo Find Movie Box Office Data	ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics	DPReview Digital Photography	Fabric Sewing, Quilting & Knitting

Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	IMDbPro Get Info Entertainment Professionals Need	Kindle Direct Publishing Indie Digital & Print Publishing Made Easy	Amazon Photos Unlimited Photo Storage Free With Prime	Prime Video Direct Video Distribution Made Easy

Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands	Amazon Warehouse Great Deals on Quality Used Products	Whole Foods Market America’s Healthiest Grocery Store	Woot! Deals and Shenanigans	Zappos Shoes & Clothing	Ring Smart Home Security Systems

eero WiFi Stream 4K Video in Every Room	Blink Smart Security for Every Home	Neighbors App Real-Time Crime & Safety Alerts	Amazon Subscription Boxes Top subscription boxes – right to your door	PillPack Pharmacy Simplified	Amazon Renewed Like-new products you can trust

Follow the Author

The Call Girls Hardcover – January 1, 1973

Popular titles by this author

Product details

Videos

About the author

Arthur Koestler

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries