The Thirteenth Tribe  

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Arthur Koestler (September 5, 1905, Budapest – March 3, 1983, London) was a Hungarian polymath who became a naturalized British subject. He is best known for his novel Darkness at Noon.

He wrote journalism, novels, social philosophy, and books on scientific subjects. In 1931, he joined the Communist Party of Germany, but left the party seven years later, after emigrating to the United Kingdom. By the late 1940s, he was one of the most recognized and outspoken British anti-communists, and he remained politically active through the 1950s. He wrote several popular books, including Arrow in the Blue (the first volume of his autobiography), The Yogi and the Commissar (a collection of essays, many dealing with Communism), The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe, The Act of Creation, and The Thirteenth Tribe (a new theory on the origins of Eastern European Jews). Koestler's Magnum opus, the novel Darkness at Noon about the Soviet 1930s purges, ranks with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as a fictional treatment of Stalinism. He also wrote Encyclopædia Britannica articles.

Published works

Fiction

• 1939. The Gladiators. A novel on the revolt of Spartacus.
• 1940. Darkness at Noon.
• 1943. Arrival and Departure, novel.
• 1946. Thieves in the Night.
• 1951. The Age of Longing.
• 1972. The Call Girls: A Tragicomedy with a Prologue and Epilogue. A novel about scholars making a living on the international seminar-conference circuit.

Drama

• 1945. Twilight Bar.

Autobiography

• 1937. Spanish Testament.
• 1941. Scum of the Earth.
• 1942. Dialogue with Death.
• 1952. Arrow In The Blue: The First Volume Of An Autobiography, 1905-31, 2005 reprint, ISBN 0-09-949067-6
• 1954. The Invisible Writing: The Second Volume Of An Autobiography, 1932-40, 1984 reprint, ISBN 0-8128-6218-X
• 1984. Stranger on the Square co-written with Cynthia Koestler, published posthumously, edited and with an Introduction and Epilogue by Harold Harris, Hutchinson, London 1984, ISBN 0-09-154330-4.

NB The books The Lotus and the Robot, The God that Failed, and Von weissen Nächten und roten Tagen, as well as his numerous essays, all may contain further autobiographical information.

Other non-fiction

• 1934. Von weissen Nächten und roten Tagen. About Koestler's travels in the USSR. In his The Invisible Writing, Koestler calls the book Red Days and White Nights, or, more usually, Red Days. Of the five foreign language editions − Russian, German, Ukrainian, Georgian, Armenian − which were intended, only the German version was eventually published, "thoroughly expurgated", in Kharkov, Ukrainian S.S.R., and the work is therefore very scarce.
• 1937. L'Espagne ensanglantée.
• 1941 Scum of the Earth. Account of his life in France before and after the outbreak of World War Two, with a detailed account of his internment at Le Vernet, the French concentration camp for undesirable aliens.
• 1942 (summer) Le yogi et le commissaire.
• 1945. The Yogi and the Commissar and other essays.
• 1949. The Challenge of our Time.
• 1949. Promise and Fulfilment: Palestine 1917-1949.
• 1949. Insight and Outlook.
• 1955. The Trail of the Dinosaur and other essays.
• 1956. Reflections on Hanging.
• 1959. The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe. ISBN 0-14-019246-8   An account of changing scientific paradigms.
• 1960. The Watershed: A Biography of Johannes Kepler. (excerpted from The Sleepwalkers.) ISBN 0-385-09576-7
• 1960. The Lotus and the Robot, ISBN 0-09-059891-1. Koestler's journey to India and Japan, and his assessment of East and West.
• 1961. Control of the Mind.
• 1961. Hanged by the Neck. Reuses some material from Reflections on Hanging.
• 1963. Suicide of a Nation.
• 1964. The Act of Creation.
• 1967. The Ghost in the Machine. Penguin reprint 1990: ISBN 0-14-019192-5.
• 1968. Drinkers of Infinity: Essays 1955-1967.
• 1970. The Age of Longing, ISBN 0-09-104520-7.
• 1971. The Case of the Midwife Toad, ISBN 0-394-71823-2. An account of Paul Kammerer's research on Lamarckian evolution and what he called "serial coincidences".
• 1972. The Roots of Coincidence, ISBN 0-394-71934-4. Sequel to The Case of the Midwife Toad.
• 1973. The Lion and the Ostrich.
• 1974. The Heel of Achilles: Essays 1968-1973, ISBN 0-09-119400-8.
• 1976. The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage, ISBN 0-394-40284-7.
• 1976. Astride the Two Cultures: Arthur Koestler at 70, ISBN 0-394-40063-1.
• 1977. Twentieth Century Views: A Collection of Critical Essays, ISBN 0-13-049213-2.
• 1978. Janus: A Summing Up, ISBN 0-394-50052-0. Sequel to The Ghost in the Machine
• 1980. Bricks to Babel. Random House, ISBN 0-394-51897-7. This 1980 anthology of passages from many of his books, described as "A selection from 50 years of his writings, chosen and with new commentary by the author", is a comprehensive introduction to Koestler's writing and thought.
• 1981. Kaleidoscope. Essays from Drinkers of Infinity and The Heel of Achilles, plus later pieces and stories.

Writings as a contributor

• The Encyclopœdia of Sexual Knowledge (1934) (In his autobiography The Invisible Writing, Koestler uses the ligature œ in the spelling of the word "Encyclopaedia".)
• Foreign Correspondent (1940) uncredited contributor to Alfred Hitchcock film produced by Walter Wanger

• The God That Failed (1950) (collection of testimonies by ex-Communists)
• Attila, the Poet (1954) (Encounter ; ; 1954.2 (5)). On loan at the UCL library of the School of Slavonic & Eastern European Studies.
• Beyond Reductionism: The Alpbach Symposium. New Perspectives in the Life Sciences (co-editor with J.R. Smythies, 1969), ISBN 0-8070-1535-0
• The Challenge of Chance: A Mass Experiment in Telepathy and Its Unexpected Outcome (1973)
• The Concept of Creativity in Science and Art (1976)
• Life After Death, (co-editor, 1976)
• Humour and Wit. I: Encyclopædia Britannica. 15th ed. vol. 9.(1983)
• humour - Encyclopædia Britannica (by Arthur Koestler)