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Koestler was born in Budapest, Hungary, and studied science and psychology at the University of Vienna. After college he worked as a news correspondent. From 1926 to 1929 he lived in the British Mandate of Palestine. He joined the Communist Party in 1931, but left it after the Stalinist purges of 1938. While covering the Spanish Civil War, he was captured and held for several months by the Nationalists. After spending time in a French detention camp, he joined the French Foreign Legion. He then escaped to England and joined the British Army.
He then lived in London, where he made his living writing and lecturing. Koestler, an advocate of euthanasiaEuthanasia ( Greek, "good death") is the practice of killing a person or animal, in a painless or minimally painful way, for merciful reasons, usually to end their suffering. This article discusses euthanasia in humans; a separate article covers animal eu, and suffering from Parkinson's diseaseParkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disease of the substantia nigra (an area in the basal ganglia). The disease was first discovered and its symptoms documented in 1817 Essay on the Shaking Palsy by the British physician Dr. James Parkinson; the as, took his own life along with his wife in a joint suicideSuicide (from Latin sui caedere to kill oneself) is the act of ending one's own life. It is considered a sin in many religions, and a crime in some jurisdictions. On the other hand, some cultures have viewed it as an honorable way to exit certain shameful in England.
Koestler was fluent in HungarianThe Hungarian language is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Hungary and in adjacent areas of Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Austria, Slovenia (all territories lost after World War I). The Hungarian name for the language is Magyar''. There are, GermanGerman (called Deutsch in German in which germanisch refers to prechristian times), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and one of the world's major languages. It is the language with the most native speakers in the European Union., and EnglishThe English language is a West Germanic language, originating from England. It is the third most common "first" language (native speakers), with around 402 million people in 2002. English has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the mil, and knew some rusty HebrewThe Modern Hebrew language is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. What makes it unique is that the original Bible, the Torah, by Orthodox Jews held to be recorded in the time of Moses 3,300 years ago, was written in Biblical Classical.
Always the connoisseur and lover, Koestler was married three times, excluding the short romantic fling he had with notable French thinker Simone de BeauvoirSimone de Beauvoir ( January 9, 1908 April 14, 1986) was a French author, philosopher, and feminist. Born Simone Lucie-Ernestine-Marie-Bertrand de Beauvoir on January 9, 1908 in Paris, France, she eventually studied at the elite Ecole Normale Superieure w, probably explaining the mutual animosity between Koestler and Jean-Paul Sartre. A 1998 biography claimed that Koestler had beaten and raped several women, including film director Jill Craigie . After protests, a bust of Koestler was removed from display at the University of Edinburgh.