A new edition of Arthur Koestler's gripping tale of arrest, imprisonment, and subsequent escape to London from Nazi-occupied France.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
What I said for the paperback!:
ONE of the greatest books to come out of the second world war now carries a tragic irony. The reverberations of its author's suicide in 1983 spill over into one's reading of it. In 1939, Koestler was living in the South of France working on Darkness At Noon. Moving to Paris to enlist with the Allies he was, along with thousands of others who had fought Fascism around Europe, imprisoned as an undesirable alien. Life in the camp, which German emigres testified to being comparable with Dachau, is... more info
...and it works as a memoir, too!:
Arthur Koestler's memoir about his experiences during the beginning of the Second World War is interesting from a historical standpoint. Koestler finds himself all over Europe, in and out of internment camps, encountering people from all over of all classes. Koestler's experience is interesting because the way he was treated was not the norm, it was the product of his unique background and situation, but it still represents the wide range of possible experiences during this historically uncertain time. The... more info
The Path of Least Resistance?:
This is the history that France would rather forget, despite claims that the account was part fictionalised it nonetheless reveals disturbing tendencies in pre-German invasion France that were to aid the Nazi occupation and also create the Vichy regime. Anti-Communist and anti-Jewish tendencies, he claims were spreading through France at the time, and leading some people there to believe that German occupation may have been a necessary evil to purge France of left wing and Jewish elements. Koestler also... more info
Variety:
The book itself is interseting, beceause it describes how many situations a man can experience during wartime. How the idyllic countryside life changes into the terror of a concentration camp, and then into a desperate fight against the bureacracy. I am pleased to recommend this book to everybody, who is not only interested in cheap thrillers.......
