++++A brilliant, brooding, introspective man, the Hungarian-born Mr. Koestler was present at a succession of political battlefronts in the 1920's and 30's, and he distilled his experiences and reflections into a succession of novels, essays and memoirs that brought him fame and critical acclaim.
In his 1940 novel "Darkness at Noon" and in other writing, Mr. Koestler was one of the first prominent intellectuals of the period to declare that the Utopia dreamed of by the left had turned into a nightmare.
The sufferings of the novel's protagnist, Rubashov - who was based, in part, on the Bolshevik leader Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, a prominent victim of Stalin's purges - has been widely seen as an early warning signal of the moral danger inherent in a system that sacrificed means to ends.
Summarizing his political evolution, Mr. Koestler once said: "I started in a relatively narrow movement, as a young duel-fighting Zionist. From there I went, or was pushed, into a more general cause, the world revolution, the last of captialism, the end of man's exploitation of man and so on. These ideals, which I focused on the Soviet Union, were betrayed by the Stalinist dictatorship and I went into the opposition camp."