"A Parable about the Dangers of Utopianism"

"He grew up in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, witnessing revolutions and counter-revolutions. He was one of the first Zionist settlers in Palestine. He became a star in the Berlin of Sally Bowles' cabarets and a rising Adolf Hitler. He was jailed and nearly shot by Gen. Franco. He fled the Nazis through Casablanca, Morocco. He gave Albert Camus a black eye, George Orwell a holiday home, and Soviet communism an enema. He had sex with supermodel twins, took magic mushrooms with Timothy Leary*, and helped create Intelligent Design. Oh—and he was a rapist."

Johann Hari in Slate reviews Michael Scammell's Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic.