Born in Budapest in 1905, Arthur Koestler was a pivotal European writer and intellectual who inspired, provoked and intrigued in equal measure. Koestler wrote enduring works of reportage and memoir but he is most famous for his political novel Darkness at Noon, which received widespread international acclaim upon its publication in 1940. Born to a secular Jewish middle-class family in Austro-Hungary a decade before the First World War, [he] was a leading documentarist of some of the key moments in twentieth-century European history [while self-staging as a witness to them]. For year he struggled with his Jewish identity, becoming committed to progressive causes early on, notably Zionist politics, before embracing more esoteric ideas later in life. Koestler's interest and science and technology influenced his writing and journalism, and inspired ideas his reflections on rationalism, mysticism and the future of humankind. Following controversial claims of sexual violence that emerged shortly after his suicide in 1983, his name was brought into public disrepute, and his legacy today remains problematic.--