The first volume of the remarkable autobiography of Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon. In 1931, Arthur Koestler joined the Communist Party, an event he felt to be second only in importance to his birth in shaping his destiny. Before that point, he lived a tumultuous and varied existence.

He was a member of the duelling fraternity at the University of Vienna; a collective farm worker in Galilee; a tramp and street vendor in Haifa; the editor of a weekly paper in Cairo; the foreign correspondent of the biggest continental newspaper chain in Paris and the Middle East; a science editor in Berlin; and a member of the North Pole expedition of the Graf Zeppelin. Written with enormous zest, joie de vivre and frankness, Arrow in the Blue is a fascinating self-portrait of a remarkable young man at the heart of the events that shaped the twentieth century. The second volume of Arthur Koestler's autobiography is The Invisible Writing.