The Call-Girls: A Tragi-Comedy with Prologue and Epilogue is a novel (ISBN 0-09-112550-2) by Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...

. The plot tells the story of a group of academic scientist

Scientist

A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...

s struggling to understand the human tendency towards self-destruction

Self-hatred

Self-hatred refers to an extreme dislike and hatred of oneself, or being angry at or even prejudiced towards oneself. The term is also used to designate a dislike or hatred of a group, family, social class, mental illness, or stereotype to which one belongs and/or has...

, while the group members gradually become more suspicious and aggressive towards each other.

In this novel Koestler introduces the term cocacolonization

Cocacolonization

Cocacolonization is a term that refers to globalization or cultural colonization. It is a portmanteau of the name of the multinational soft drink maker Coca-Cola and the word colonization....

to refer to the expansion of a typical modern diet, consisting of such fare as hamburgers, French fries, fat-rich snacks, soft drinks high in sugar. Nowadays the term is widely used by physicians when they want to explain, at least in part, the global expansion of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular risk factors.