Koestler, Arthur

(born Sept. 5, 1905, Budapest, Hung.—found dead March 3, 1983, London, Eng.) Hungarian-British novelist, journalist, and critic.

He is best known for Darkness at Noon (1940); a political novel examining the moral danger in a totalitarian system that sacrifices means to an end, it reflects the events leading to his break with the Communist Party and his experience as a correspondent imprisoned by the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. He also wrote of his break with the party in the essay collection The God That Failed (1949). His later works, mostly concerning science and philosophy, include The Act of Creation (1964) and The Ghost in the Machine (1967). Suffering from leukemia and Parkinson's disease and believing in voluntary euthanasia, he died with his wife in a suicide pact.