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Scum of the Earth
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About this ebook
At the beginning of the Second World War, Koestler was living in the south of France working on Darkness at Noon. After retreating to Paris he was imprisoned by the French as an undesirable alien even though he had been a respected crusader against fascism. Only luck and his passionate energy allowed him to escape the fate of many of the innocent refugees, who were handed over to the Nazis for torture and often execution. Scum of the Earth is more than the story of Koestler's survival. His shrewd observation of the collapse of French determination to resist during the summer of 1940 is an illustration of what happens when a nation loses its honour and its pride.
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Arthur Koestler
ARTHUR KOESTLER (1905–1983) was a novelist, journalist, essayist, and a towering public intellectual of the mid-twentieth century. Writing in both German and English, he published more than forty books during his life. Koestler is perhaps best known for Darkness at Noon, a novel often ranked alongside Nineteen Eighty-Four in its damning portrayal of totalitarianism.
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Reviews for Scum of the Earth
Rating: 4.1666671 out of 5 stars
4/5
30 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Interesting story about being a foreign resident of France in 1939-40, who was arrested twice and then incarcerated in the infamous Le Vernet internment camp just before the German Nazis took control of it in 1940. Grim details about living in miserable conditions, surviving and getting out of the camp. Also about escaping from France ahead of the German Nazis and finally explaining how veterans of the Spanish Republican Army were mistreated by the French police and then scooped up by the Nazis and delivered to German concentration camps.