A Man Who Knew His Century

IN a slightly dingy side street, not far from the center of Budapest, stands a house with a plaque on its brick wall recording that on September 5, 1905, Arthur Koestler was born in an apartment on the first floor. The course of his life was to dramatize the epoch’s defining struggle between democracy and totalitarianism. His world-famous novel Darkness at Noon, and then his groundbreaking essay in the collection The God That Failed, powerfully dispelled the appeal of Communism. In return, throughout the Cold War the Soviets and their mouthpieces attacked him as an Enemy of the People, and it was too dangerous for him to revisit Budapest. What a revolution that they are proud of him now in his native country! That plaque signifies that Hungary has regained its freedom, and Koestler’s courage and genius are recognized at last.

Koestler liked to say that he was a typical Central European blown about in the storms of the century. This was true in the sense that the coming Age of the Dictators was unimaginable in families like his. His father was a businessman with quirky and lossmaking ideas, for instance developing radioactive toilet soap and a machine for cutting envelopes open. That family apartment, Koestler recorded, was “stuffed with plush curtains, antimacassars, tassels, fringes, lace covers, bronze nymphs, cuspidors, and Meissen stags at bay.” Social claustrophobia, his Jewish heritage, curiosity about everything under the sun, and above all a supreme intelligence set him off on a lifelong existential inquiry.

About the Author

David Pryce-Jones

David Pryce-Jones (1936–2025) was a British author and commentator and served as a senior editor of National Review.

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IN a slightly dingy side street, not far from the center of Budapest, stands a house with a plaque on its brick wall recording that on September 5, 1905, Arthur Koestler was born in an apartment on the first floor. The course of his life was to dramatize the epoch’s defining struggle between democracy and totalitarianism. His world-famous novel Darkness at Noon, and then his groundbreaking essay in the collection The God That Failed, powerfully dispelled the appeal of Communism. In return, throughout the Cold War the Soviets and their mouthpieces attacked him as an Enemy of the People, and it was too dangerous for him to revisit Budapest. What a revolution that they are proud of him now in his native country! That plaque signifies that Hungary has regained its freedom, and Koestler’s courage and genius are recognized at last.

Koestler liked to say that he was a typical Central European blown about in the storms of the century. This was true in the sense that the coming Age of the Dictators was unimaginable in families like his. His father was a businessman with quirky and lossmaking ideas, for instance developing radioactive toilet soap and a machine for cutting envelopes open. That family apartment, Koestler recorded, was “stuffed with plush curtains, antimacassars, tassels, fringes, lace covers, bronze nymphs, cuspidors, and Meissen stags at bay.” Social claustrophobia, his Jewish heritage, curiosity about everything under the sun, and above all a supreme intelligence set him off on a lifelong existential inquiry.