Outlook & Insight

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 Those reflections are explored in ten segments, one of which is Koestler’s own unpublished summary of the first half of “The Gladiators”.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”.