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The Invisible Writing
''The Invisible Writing: The Second Volume Of An Autobiography, 1932-40'' (1954) is a book by Arthur Koestler. It follows on from '' Arrow in the Blue'', published two years earlier, and which described his life from his birth in 1905, to 1931, and deals with a much shorter period, a mere eight years (as opposed to the twenty six of the previous volume). This was nonetheless, a highly significant period in Koestler's life, as it involved his membership and subsequent alienation from the Communist movement. As well as his relationship with Communism, ''The Invisible Writing'' is also interesting for its documentation of Europe in the years leading up to World War II, both his native Hungary and Austria, Germany, and also the west, such as Spain, France and England. In ''The Invisible Writing'', Koestler recalls that during the summer of 1935 he "wrote about half of a satirical novel called '' The Good Soldier Schweik Goes to War Again....''. It had been commissioned by Willy M ...
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Falange
The Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FET y de las JONS; ), frequently shortened to just "FET", was the sole legal party of the Francoist regime in Spain. It was created by General Francisco Franco in 1937 as a merger of the fascist Falange Española de las JONS (FE de las JONS) with the monarchist neoabsolutist and ultracatholic Traditionalist Communion belonging to the Carlist movement. In addition to the resemblance of names, the party formally retained most of the platform of FE de las JONS (26 out of 27 points) and a similar inner structure. In force until April 1977, it was rebranded as Movimiento Nacional in 1958. History Early history The FET y de las JONS began as the Spanish Falange, a Falangist party, The Council of National Syndicalist Offensives, a national syndicalist party and Traditionalist Communion, a Catholic monarchist party, three parties that were becoming relevant in Spanish right wing politics befor ...
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Books By Arthur Koestler
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is ''codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a b ...
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1954 Non-fiction Books
Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head office of IBM. * January 10 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue, and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba; all 35 people on board are killed. * January 12 – 1954 Blons avalanches, Avalanches in Austria kill more than 200. * January 15 – Mau Mau rebellion, Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya. * January 17 – In Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas, one of the leading members of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, is relieved of his duties. * January 20 – The US-based National Negro Network is established, with 46 m ...
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Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ...
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Camp Vernet
Le Vernet Internment Camp, or Camp Vernet, was a concentration camp in Le Vernet, Ariège, near Pamiers, in the French Pyrenees. Built in 1918 as a barracks but after WWI used as an internment camp for prisoners of war. From February 1939 to June 1944, it was used as an internment camp (concentration camp), first for Republican refugees (soldiers, their families, opponents of the Franco regime) fleeing Spain after Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War, in particular some 12,000 refugees, including soldiers of Durruti Column and others of the International Brigades, under the legitimate French government and then, as of May-June 1940, under the Vichy government after German occupation during the Second World War. Starting in 1940, apart from the prisoners coming from the Spanish Civil War, the Vichy government used it to house prisoners considered suspect or dangerous to the government, including members of the resistance and opponents of the Hitler, Mussolini and Pétain regi ...
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Scum Of The Earth (novel)
''Scum of the Earth'' is a memoir by Anglo-Hungarian writer Arthur Koestler in which he describes his life in France during 1939-1940, the chaos that prevailed in France just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War and France’s collapse, his tribulations, internment in a concentration camp, and eventual escape to England, via North Africa and Portugal. It was first published by Jonathan Cape in 1941. Background At the outbreak of the Second World War, Koestler was living in the South of France working on ''Darkness at Noon''. After retreating to Paris he was imprisoned by the French as an undesirable alien, even though he had been a respected anti-fascist. Koestler arrived in England in December 1940, without an entry permit, travelling with a Hungarian passport. Although he was by then widely known as an anti-fascist he was imprisoned as an enemy alien while his case was being reviewed by the Home Office. While he was in Pentonville Prison in London, his novel ''Darkn ...
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Darkness At Noon
''Darkness at Noon'' (german: link=no, Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by Hungarian-born novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried for treason against the government that he helped to create. The novel is set between 1938 and 1940, after the Stalinism, Stalinist Great Purge and Moscow show trials. Despite being based on real events, the novel does not name either Russia or the Soviet Union, Soviets, and tends to use generic terms to describe people and organizations: for example the Soviet government is referred to as "the Party" and Nazi Germany is referred to as "the Dictatorship". Joseph Stalin is represented by "Number One", a menacing dictator. The novel expresses the author's disillusionment with the Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Bolshevik ideology of the Soviet Union at the outset of World War II. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked ''Dark ...
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Spanish Testament
''Spanish Testament'' is a 1937 book by Arthur Koestler, describing his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. Part II of the book was subsequently published on its own, with minor modifications, under the title ''Dialogue with Death'' (see below). Koestler made three trips to Spain during the civil war; the third time he was captured, sentenced to death and imprisoned by the Nationalist forces of General Franco. Koestler was at that time working on behalf of the Comintern and as an agent of the Loyalist Government's official news agency, using for cover accreditation to the British daily ''News Chronicle''. The book was published in London by Victor Gollancz Ltd. The 'Contents' of the book is in two parts: Part I describes the context in which he was captured, divided into IX chapters, each with its own title. Part II, titled ''Dialogue with Death,'' describes Koestler's prison experiences under sentence of death. This part was written in the late autumn of 1937 immediately ...
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Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link=no) or The Uprising ( es, La Sublevación, link=no) among Republicans. was a civil war in Spain fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, and consisted of various socialist, communist, separatist, anarchist, and republican parties, some of which had opposed the government in the pre-war period. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists led by a military junta among whom General Francisco Franco quickly achieved a preponderant role. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war had many facets and was variously viewed as cla ...
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Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler joined the Communist Party of Germany, but he resigned in 1938 after becoming disillusioned with Stalinism. Having moved to Britain in 1940, he published his novel ''Darkness at Noon'', an anti-totalitarian work that gained him international fame. Over the next 43 years, Koestler espoused many political causes and wrote novels, memoirs, biographies, and numerous essays. In 1949, Koestler began secretly working with a British Cold War anti-communist propaganda department known as the Information Research Department (IRD), which would republish and distribute many of his works, and also fund his activities. In 1968, he was awarded the Sonning Prize "for [his] outstanding contribution to European culture". In 1972 he was made a Order of the Briti ...
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