So, right after I go off about how nobody reads Darkness at Noon anymore, the New Yorker comes along with a full-on review of Arthur Koestler’s major works and a biographical sketch.

This article makes Koestler sound like a badass, globe-trotting, hard-drinking, philandering spy.

Arthur Koestler, Graham Greene, Victor Serge–there’s a handful of writers who make Ernest Hemingway’s experience in wartime Europe seem brutish and simple by comparison.

Especially crazy, to me, is how Koestler led such a far-flung, volatile life, but his most famous novel takes place almost entirely in a single prison cell.

If you have any interest in WWII, or the chaos of midcentury Europe, or communism and fascism, or prison camps, or badass secret agent stuff, well, here you go.

.