Koestler, Arthur
Spanish Testament
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 07 February 2024 from 10:00 GMT
Description
With an Introduction by the Duchess of Atholl. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1937. First edition, first impression, 8vo, original black cloth, dust jacket, contents browned, spotting to endpapers and occasionally to margins, contemporary ownership inscription to front free endpaper, dust jacket spine-panel toned, spotted and nicked, a few front and rear panels toned along extremities, rear panel slightly spotted and marked
Footnote
The author's first book published in English, very uncommon in the dust jacket. Koestler travelled to Spain in 1936 as a special correspondent for the anti-Franco New Chronicle. A few months later 'he was captured by Franco's troops and imprisoned in Malaga and Seville from February to June, under daily threat of execution' (ODNB). He was eventually released following the intervention of the British government, but the experience scarred him for the rest of his life, and has a clear fictional parallel in the imprisonment and execution of Rubashov, the protagonist of Darkness at Noon.