Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind

Correcting historians' omission of Koestler's (1905-1983) role in communism's fall, British historian Cesarani places the author of Darkness at Noon in the front ranks of Cold Warriors. In addition, he deals with not only Koestler's later interest in science (and the paranormal), but also his contradictory and profoundly flawed character. While Koestler mythologized himself in his multivolume autobiography, and muzzled his official biographer in 1982, Cesarani has had the benefit of Koestler's complete literary estate, his FBI files and the KGB's notorious ""Special Archive"" to detail the writer's political and intellectual wanderings. Cesarani charts Koestler's political odyssey from his early involvement with Zionism in Palestine in the 1920s through his membership in the Communist Party in Nazi Berlin and Civil War Spain to his denunciation of Stalinism in England during WWII. During his Cold War notoriety, however, the writer was embarking on a new course into biology and physics, and on a search for a rational philosophy to replace Marxism. Whatever Koestler's shifting intellectual creeds, Cesarani underscores his Jewish identity, which Koestler consistently underplayed yet could not ignore. In more disturbing revelations, besides Koestler's lifelong womanizing and three marriages (the last ended in dual suicide), Cesarani uncovers the details of one sexual assault and concludes that Koestler was a ""serial rapist."" In chronicling Koestler's remarkable political journey, public resolution and private wrongs, Cesarani's biography manages to be both authoritative and ambivalent. (Dec.)