Michael Scammell is the author of Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth Century Skeptic and Solzhenitsyn, A Biography. He has translated books by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Nabokov into English and writes regularly about Russian and East European literature.
Read More | Contact Michael ScammellPraise for Michael Scammell
-
“
Koestler himself seems so alive he might leap off the page.
”—Anne Applebaum, The New York Review of Books
-
“
A terrific biography... every page is enthralling.
”—Michael Dirda, Washington Post
-
“
Superb biography.
”—Paul Berman, The New Republic
-
“
A prodigy of research in many languages.
”—Louis Menand, The New Yorker
-
“
Tremendous, absorbing.
”—Neal Ascherson, London Review of Books
-
“
Magisterial.
”—John Carey, The Sunday Times (UK)
Koestler
The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic
The Indispensable Intellectual
Buy The Book
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BetterWorldBooks.com, IndieBound, Random House,News
27 February 2024
Darkness at Noon - New English Translation Published
When I first read the newly discovered German typescript and decided to push for a new English translation of Arthur Koestler's dystopian novel, Darkness at Noon, I was aware there was a risk involved. When first published in 1941, the novel had been almost buried by the horrors of World War II, then borne aloft to best seller status by the upheavals of the Cold War, but that was in the latter hal…27 February 2024
Darkness at Noon - New German Edition
The original German text of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon (see my last news entry) has just been published by Elsinor Verlag in Coesfeld, Germany, with my introduction and an afterword by the you…27 February 2024
Biography Conference in Mexico City
"Under history, memory and forgetting,Under memory and forgetting, life.
But writing a life is another story.
Incompletion."
These lines by the French philosopher and poet, Paul Ricoeur, are a good …