Featuring a selection of brand new essays by a group of accomplished scholars,Arthur Koestler's Fiction and the Genre of the Novelcovers all of Koestler's novels published in his lifetime, the first book to attempt this in English since Mark Levene'sArthur Koestler, published thirty-seven years ago. The team of contributors, with research backgrounds in history, political science, religious studies, law, linguistics and journalism besides literature, offers a truly multidisciplinary take on how Koestler's novels utilize, and at times transcend, the genre of the novel, and argues for their enduring relevance and appeal in the twenty-first century, inviting the reader to revisit and reassess them. With the topics of Koestler's novels including terrorism, massive migration, espionage, rape trauma, war trauma, the crisis of faith, propaganda, fake news and the role and responsibility of intellectuals in major international crises, as the volume aims to show, these texts are just as topical today, as they were at the time of their publication.

Zénó Vernyikis assistant professor and head of the English department at the Technical University of Liberec.

Foreword

Matthias Weßel

Acknowledgements

From Reviving the Dinosaur to Reconnecting with the Visionary: An Introduction to the Volume and an Overview of the State of Koestler Studies

Zénó Vernyik

Part 1: Between Genres and Subgenres

Chapter 1:Bucco the Peasant: A Play Embedded inThe Gladiators, Its Narrative Function and Relevance for Understanding Koestlers Fiction

Henry Innes MacAdam

Chapter 2: Can There Be Multiple Keys?The Age of Longing and the Genre of the Romanàclef

Zénó Vernyik

Part 2: The Political Novel

Chapter 3: Images of Revolution: OrwellsAnimal Farm and KoestlersThe Gladiators

Stephen Ingle

Chapter 4: Bernards Vision of the Totalitarian State inArrival and Departure: A Discourse Analytical View of Political Metaphors

Uwe Klawitter

Part 3: Investigating the Self and Its Dilemmas through the Prism of the Novel

Chapter 5: Beyond Communism: Reflections on Rubashovs Character from the Perspectives of Identity, Ethics and Relevance

Alice Eged

Chapter 6: Rubashovs Heritage: The Tragedy of Futility Portraying the Individual Where No Individuality Is Allowed

Krisztián Kacsinecz and Szilvia Deisler

Part 4: The Zionist Novel: Nation, Identity and Race

Chapter 7:Thieves in the Night: Land and Identity

Jenni Calder

Chapter 8: Arthur Koestler and the Jewish Race According toThieves in the Night

Motti Inbari

Part 5: The Novel as Summary

Chapter 9:The Call-Girls: A Valedictory Novel

Louis Gordon