# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/arthur-koestler
# Generated: 2026-08-31T14:40:53.386Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/arthur-koestler"
name: "Arthur Koestler"
slug: "arthur-koestler"
description: "A Communist who left the Party and spent the rest of his life writing against it. Darkness at Noon made him famous in 1940 — a novel about Stalin's show trials written by someone who'd seen the machinery from inside."
tagline: "Hungarian-British author and journalist (1905–1983)"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Arthur_Koestler_(1969).jpg?width=1200"
gender: "male"
country:
  name: "United Kingdom"
  isoCode: "GB"
category:
  name: "Writers"
  slug: "writers"
profileType:
  name: "Writer / Author"
  slug: "writer"
birthDate: "1905-09-05"
deathDate: "1983-03-01"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
scores:
  popularity:           62.1
  momentum:             10.81191794641856
  historical:           24.248216
  currentAttention:     11.30555555555556
  sourceConfidence:     65
  profileCompleteness:  75
  trendDirection:       "STABLE"
ranks:
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  country:  null
  category: null
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  - name: "Stand Up"
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platforms:
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    handle:    "nm2371886"
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# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Koestler was born in Budapest in 1905 and educated mostly in Austria. He joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1931, then resigned seven years later after disillusionment with Stalinism. He moved to Britain in 1940 and published Darkness at Noon, the anti-totalitarian novel that brought international fame. Over the next four decades he wrote novels, memoirs, biographies, and essays, and from 1949 secretly worked with Britain's Cold War Information Research Department, which republished his work and funded his activities. He was awarded the Sonning Prize in 1968 and made a CBE in 1972. Diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1976 and terminal leukaemia in 1979, Koestler and his wife Cynthia died by suicide together at their London home on 1 March 1983.