The Gladiators - Softcover

Koestler, Arthur

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1939438497 ISBN 13: 9781939438492

Publisher: One 70 Press, 1981

Synopsis

The book is the first of a trilogy, including Darkness at Noon, and Arrival and Departure, which address idealism going wrong. This is a common theme in Koestler's work and life. Koestler uses his portrayal of the original slave revolt to examine the experience of the 20thcentury political left in Europe following the rise of a Communist
government in the Soviet Union. He published it on the brink of World War II. Originally written in German, the novel was translated into English for other audiences and was published in 1939.

In 1998 the British critic Geoffrey Wheatcroft wrote of the novel: "In The Gladiators, Koestler used Spartacus's revolt around 65BC to explore the search for the just city, the inevitable compromises of revolution, the conflict of ends and means, the question of whether and when it is justifiable to sacrifice lives for an abstract ideal.

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From the Back Cover:

Arthur Koestler's first novel, set in the late Roman Republic, tells the story of the revolt of Spartacus and man's search for Utopia. The first of three novels concerned with the 'ethics of revolution', it addresses the age-old debate of whether the end justifies the means, an argument continued in his classic novels Darkness at Noon and Arrival and Departure.

'The Gladiators is a philosophical novel dealing with the nature of revolution; a melancholy commentary on the failure of politics to respond to men's inner needs...Koestler is revealing to us the dialectic of history, with a moral, if we choose to take it, for our own times. But he is never didactic and his story...is as vivid in action as in argument' Sunday Times

'Arthur Koestler is one of the very few novelists who attacks the most difficult and troubling issues of private and political morality and who, having raised serious questions, never tries to satisfy us with ready-made answers or evasions' Saul Bellow

'In The Gladiators this episode in Roman history is lifted out of the textbooks by a novelist of unusual sympathy and understanding. In a brooding, ominous, impressive style he extracts the human story from the record, and re-creates, finely, with a modern's appreciation of motives and symptoms, the social life which evoked this extraordinary revolt' Sean O'Faolain

About this edition

• Publisher: One 70 Press
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 1939438497
• ISBN 13: 9781939438492
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 322