Arrival and Departure - Plot

Plot

Written during the middle of World War II, Arrival and Departure reflects Koestler's own plight as a Hungarian refugee. Like Koestler, the main character is a former member of the Communist party. He escapes to 'Neutralia', a neutral country based on Portugal, where Koestler himself had gone, and flees from there. (Stephen Spender had supposedly said of Neutralia, "Names like that should not be allowed in novels!") Reflecting Koestler's later life relationship with science, and particularly his disagreement with various movements within psychiatry, the main character emerges from treatment psychically neutered, and the critical question of the novel is how much of his later trauma and political activity is due to a small incident in his childhood.

Arthur Koestler
Novels
  • The Gladiators
  • Darkness at Noon
  • Arrival and Departure
  • Thieves in the Night
  • The Call-Girls
Nonfiction
  • The Encyclopœdia of Sexual Knowledge
  • The Sleepwalkers
  • The Lotus and the Robot
  • The Act of Creation
  • The Ghost in the Machine
  • The Roots of Coincidence
  • The Heel of Achilles: Essays 1968–1973
  • The Thirteenth Tribe
  • Janus: A Summing Up
Autobiography
  • Spanish Testament
  • Scum of the Earth
  • Dialogue with Death
  • The God that Failed
  • Arrow in the Blue
  • The Invisible Writing
  • Stranger on the Square
Related articles
  • Arthur Koestler (book)
  • Koestler Trust
  • Living with Koestler: Mamaine Koestler's Letters 1945–51
  • Arthur Koestler: The Story of a Friendship

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