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Sat 03 Mar 2010Koestler's melancholic mind
BIOGRAPHY: JOHN MONTAGUEreviews Koestler: The Indispensable IntellectualBy Michael Scammell Faber Faber, 689pp. £25
THIS IS A formidable book, well researched and, if not stylistically glittering, well marshalled. After the lion of Solzhenitsyn, to use Isaiah Berlin’s metaphor for genius, Michael Scammell tries to track the footprints of that wily fox, Arthur Koestler, through many houses in many countries, many causes and, it seems, many women. It is as if the Cassandra-like voice of his most famous work, Darkness at Noon, cohabited with Casanova.
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