Word: koestler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Koestler on Palestine" [TIME, Nov. 4], your reviewer stated that Joseph, the hero of Koestler's book, Thieves in the Night, was "half-English, half-Jewish...
...Arthur Koestler's discussion of the dilemma of Palestine in "Thieves in the Night" continues his work of reducing political events and ideologies to personal terms through the medium of the novel...
...once again, Koestler succeeds in producing a brilliant on-the-spot political report and an effective piece of propaganda for a cause. At the same time, perhaps inevitably, "Thieves in the Night" fails to satisfy completely as a novel, for its characters are political types rather than integrated personalities...
Joseph, an English Jew, presenting Koestler's views, is confronted with the fundamental question plaguing all Palestinian Jews both today and during the 1937-1939 period in which the action of the book takes place: can the Jewish need for a home in Palestine be better met by the peaceful text-book tactics which have brought frustration, or by the more expedient terrorist activities tainted with the unsavory odor of gangsterism? It takes Joseph two years to decide upon the second course. Through Joseph's eyes, Koestler gives the reader a vivid impression of a typical Marxist agricultural commune...
Always concerned with the relevance of personal psychology upon political events, Koestler dissects the Arab-British-Jewish triangle and finds that the British colonial administrators, "not the best type of Englishman," feel uncomfortable and ineffectual in their dealings with the legalistically impeccable but personally over-intense Jewish leaders, represented in the book by the Zionist Executive member, Glickstein. The British naturally favor the Arabs, over whom they feel comfortably superior along "the white man's burden" lines, and whose colorful tribal customs and indifferent air appeal to their more romantic nature. Koestler's British Commissioner admits to the "impartial observer...