New Releases by Arthur Koestler

« Cela faisait longtemps que Peter projetait d’écrire pour le journal mural un article sur ces oiseaux qui devaient émigrer de nouveau tous les ans. Peter était désolé pour eux ; car il n’était pas bon de devoir toujours se dire qu’on allait bientôt repartir. » Au début des années 1930, une vingtaine d’enfants juifs ayant fui l’Allemagne nazie trouvent refuge au foyer socialiste parisien l’Avenir. Cette bande de jeunes tente tant bien que mal de s’adapter à la vie en exil – ils organisent un tribunal, un collectif et même une grève –, faisant preuve de résilience dans un monde en pleine mutation sociale et politique. Leurs aventures tantôt drôles, tantôt touchantes brossent un portrait vif et étonnant de la société de l’époque qu’Arthur Koestler décrit avec acuité et insolence. Écrit en allemand en 1934 et publié pour la première fois en français en 2016 après être tombé entre les mains des services secrets soviétiques, Les Tribulations du camarade Lepiaf est le premier roman d’Arthur Koestler.

The Act of Creation begins where this view ceases to be true. Koestler affirms that all creatures have the capacity for creative activity, frequently suppressed by the automatic routines of thought and behavior that dominate their lives. The study of psychology has offered little in the way of an explanation of the creative process, and Koestler suggests that we are at our most creative when rational thought is suspended - for example in dreams and trance-like states. Then the mind is capable of receiving inspiration and insight. Taking humor as his starting point, Koestler examines what he terms ''bisociative'' thinking - the creative leap made by the mind that gives rise to new and startling perceptions and glimpses of reality. From here he assesses the workings of the mind of the scientific or artistic genius. The general reader as well as the reader with a deeper knowledge of the topics covered will find this richly documented study of creativity both illuminating and compelling.

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.

Reflections on Hanging is a searing indictment of capital punishment, inspired by its author''s own time in the shadow of a firing squad. During the Spanish Civil War, Arthur Koestler was held by the Franco regime as a political prisoner, and condemned to death. He was freed, but only after months of witnessing the fates of less-fortunate inmates. That experience informs every page of the book, which was first published in England in 1956, and followed in 1957 by this American edition. As Koestler ranges across the history of capital punishment in Britain (with a focus on hanging), he looks at notable cases and rulings, and portrays politicians, judges, lawyers, scholars, clergymen, doctors, police, jailers, prisoners, and others involved in the long debate over the justness and effectiveness of the death penalty. In Britain, Reflections on Hanging was part of a concerted, ultimately successful effort to abolish the death penalty. At that time, in the forty-eight United States, capital punishment was sanctioned in forty-two of them, with hanging still practiced in five. This edition includes a preface and afterword written especially for the 1957 American edition. The preface makes the book relevant to readers in the U.S.; the afterword overviews the modern-day history of abolitionist legislation in the British Parliament. Reflections on Hanging is relentless, biting, and unsparing in its details of botched and unjust executions. It is a classic work of advocacy for some of society''s most defenseless members, a critique of capital punishment that is still widely cited, and an enduring work that presaged such contemporary problems as the sensationalism of crime, the wrongful condemnation of the innocent and mentally ill, the callousness of penal systems, and the use of fear to control a citizenry.

Arthur Koestler''s publications manifest a wide range of political, scientific and literary interests. The Trail of the Dinosaur gathers some of his best-known essays and speeches. The Trail of the Dinosaur , first published in 1955, contains a great deal of Koestler''s thinking for the first ten years after the war – a ''farewell to arms'' as he wrote in his preface. These essays deal with the political questions that obsessed him for the best part of a quarter of a century. The essays in ''The Trail of the Dinosaur'' cover the decade 1946–55-the early or classical period of the Cold War. In that confrontation the West was on the defensive, and the majority of its progressive intellectuals were still turning a benevolently blind eye on Soviet foreign policy and the facts of life behind the Iron Curtain . In the dramatic contest between Whitaker Chambers and Alger Hiss, which has been called the Dreyfus Affair of our century, progressive opinion stood firmly behind Hiss. And when, in the New York Times, I took Chambers'' part, I became, if possible, even more unpopular among self-styled progressives than I had been before. In 1937, during the Civil War in Spain, I spent three months under sentence of death as a suspected spy, witnessing the executions of my fellow prisoners and awaiting my own. These three months left me with a vested interest in capital punishment-rather like ''half-hanged Smith'', who was cut down after fifteen minutes and lived on.

This is a new release of the original 1942 edition.

In this novel the call-girls are the men and women of the international jet-set who, at the lift of a telephone, will fly from conference to congress to symposium to discuss subjects of world importance. This time the place is Switzerland and the subject Survival...

Thieves in the Night : Chronicle of an Experiment was written in 1946. Originally intended to be the first of a trilogy, Koestler later concluded that the book stood on its own and plans for further novels made redundant. Based on the author''s own experiences in a kibbutz, it sets up a stage in describing the historical roots of the conflict between Arabs and Jewish settlers in the British ruled Palestine. The book tackles many subjects, such as Zionism and idealism. Koestler was Zionist early in life, but later abandoned the idea. The title is a Biblical reference, quoted on the title page: "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night." (2 Peter 3:10)

Publicada originalmente en 1941, El cero y el infinito es la obra maestra de Arthur Koestler, un retrato estremecedor del totalitarismo y sus mecanismos de destrucción moral. Durante las purgas estalinistas, el viejo revolucionario Nicolás Rubachof es encarcelado y sometido a tortura psicológica por el partido al que ha dedicado toda su vida. La presión que el régimen ejerce sobre él terminará por mostrarle la ironía y la vileza de una dictadura que se cree instrumento de liberación. ** Prólogo de Mario Vargas Llosa Reseña: «Koestler nos legó una obra que siempre resultará atractiva y estimulante a quienes admiren a los hombres de principios o disfruten sin más de las batallas de ideas.» Christopher Hitchens

The third volume of Arthur Koestler''s autobiography covering the years 1940-1956.

The story of Dr. Paul Kammerer, an Austrian experimental biologist, who committed suicide in 1926 after becoming involved in the Lamarckian-neo-Darwinist evolutionary controversy

Six men, who were at one time either communists or sympathizers, herein set forth the reasons why they became disillusioned with communism

An aging revolutionary is imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Party to which he has dedicated his life. He recalls a career that embodies the ironies and betrayals of a totalitarian government.