Outlook & Insight
New Research and Reflections on Arthur Koestler's "The Gladiators"
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Beschreibung
The title of this volume, “Outlook and Insight”, is deliberately evocative of Koestler’s “Insight and Outlook” (1949), an investigation of the similarities he found among and within art, science, and social ethics. In this study of Koestler through his early novel “The Gladiators”, his particular interest in revolutions via “The Law of Detours” is the focus of “Outlook” (Part 1). Those reflections are explored in ten segments, one of which is Koestler’s own unpublished summary of the first half of “The Gladiators”. The volume closes with an account of the attempt to film “The Gladiators” in the late 1950s, including the recent publication of that thwarted project’s unproduced screenplay. Additional “Insight” (Part 2) may be gained from reading the first full publication of the newly discovered correspondence generated by Edith Simon’s agreement to translate Koestler’s now-published MS of “Der Sklavenkrieg”. A Postscript presents a representative selection of Edith Simon’s sketches of characters in “The Gladiators”.
Autor*in
Henry Innes MacAdam
Henry MacAdam earned a BA and MA in Ancient History/Archaeology from the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon, and a PhD in those disciplines at the University of Manchester, UK. He taught at the American University of Beirut, in Greece, and in the USA. He has published several books and 100 articles in the field of ancient studies, children’s literature, Christian origins, biography, Phoenician history and geography, and Near Eastern epigraphy, since the 1970s. Arthur Koestler’s “The Gladiators” (1939) has been a special subject of interest for the past 15 years. His most recent publication is “The Gladiators vs Spartacus: Dueling Productions in Blacklist Hollywood” (2020). Its focus is the failed attempt, during the late 1950s, to film Koestler’s novel about ancient Rome and the Spartacus Revolt. Interest in Edith Simon, who translated “Der Sklavenkrieg” for Koestler, led to the recent discovery of correspondence between them during that process.