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THE FLIGHT PORTFOLIO

Julie Orringer

The long-awaited new novel from the best-selling author of The Invisible Bridge takes us back to occupied Europe in this gripping historical novel based on the true story of Varian Fry's extraordinary attempt to save the work, and the lives, of Jewish artists fleeing the Holocaust.
In 1940, Varian Fry - a Harvard educated American journalist - traveled to Marseille carrying three thousand dollars and a list of imperiled artists and writers he hoped to rescue within a few weeks. Instead, he ended up staying in France for thirteen months, working under the veil of a legitimate relief organization to procure false documents, amass emergency funds, and set up an underground railroad that led over the Pyrenees, into Spain, and finally to Lisbon, where the refugees embarked for safer ports. Among his many clients were Hannah Arendt, Franz Werfel, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Marc Chagall. The Flight Portfolio opens at the Chagalls' ancient stone house in Gordes, France, as the novel's hero desperately tries to persuade them of the barbarism and tragedy descending on Europe. Masterfully crafted, exquisitely written, impossible to put down, this is historical fiction of the very first order, and resounding confirmation of Orringer's gifts as a novelist. Julie Orringer is the author of the award-winning short-story collection How to Breathe Underwater, which was a New York Times Notable Book. Her novel, The Invisible Bridge, was a finalist for the 2010 National Jewish Book Award in Fiction. She is the winner of The Paris Review's Discovery Prize and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Stanford University, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn, where she is researching a new novel.
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Published 2019-05-07 by Knopf

Comments

...gripping, tender novel...

An elegant, meditative novelistic reconstruction of critical years in the life of Varian Fry... The central point of intrigue, providing a fine plot twist, is also expertly handled, evidence of an accomplished storyteller at work. Altogether satisfying. Mix Alan Furst and André Aciman, and you'll have a feel for the territory in which this well-plotted book falls.

Here's a recent Author Video that Julie shot for her Romanian readers, while she was in Marseilles for filming of Transatlantic Read more...

Orringer crafts a vivid portrait of wartime Marseille, its innate sophistication darkened by Nazi oppression, and of Fry's heroic real-life accomplishments.

Varian Fry lit a small, bright lamp in a world of darkness, and in the deft hands of Julie Orringer - under the spell of her masterful prose, her feeling portraiture, her classic spy-thriller plotting and her vivid recreation of that beautiful and terrible world - I found the radiance of Fry's courage, flawed humanity, and steadfast resistance shedding an inexhaustible light on our own ever-darkening time.

No book this year could possibly compare with THE FLIGHT PORTFOLIO: ambitious, meticulous, big-hearted, gorgeous, historical, suspenseful, everything you want a novel to be.

This harrowing novel is based on the real story of Varian Fry, an American journalist who organized an underground railroad during World War II to transport Jewish artists - including Hannah Arendt and Marcel Duchamp - away from the atrocities of the Holocaust.

A literary epic, intimate romance and page-turning historical thriller.

Magnificent... Unforgettable...Brilliantly conceived, impeccably crafted, and showcasing Orringer's extraordinary gifts, this is destined to become a classic.

Netflix and Unorthodox creator Anna Winger and her production company Airlift Productions have set a multi-year creative partnership. The overall deal will see Winger and Airlift develop and produce international drama series for the streamer. The first project for the partnership will be Transatlantic (working title), a drama series set during the 1940 refugee crisis in Marseille, France. It's inspired by the true adventures of the Emergency Rescue Committee and Julie Orringer's 2019 novel, The Flight Portfolio. The series is created by Winger and Daniel Hendler and is currently in pre-production. Read more...

...it's classic storytelling through a transgressive lens. Portfolio offers a testament to something nicely old-fashioned, though, too: the enduring transformative power of art, and love, in any form.

[Orringer] make[s] us care so deeply about the people of her all-too-real fictional world. For the time it takes to read this fine novel, and for a long time afterward, it becomes our world too.

A historical novel absolutely relevant to our own time, The Flight Portfolio brings to life a hero as complex and engrossing as the agonizing ethical questions he faces. Orringer not only recreates the world of wartime Marseille, but seems to drop the reader there by way of a masterfully fashioned literary trapdoor - and anyone who picks up this spectacular novel risks a swift descent into its vivid and consuming swirl.

UK / C: Blackfiars / LB UK ; Greece: Dardanos ; Hungary: Libri Konvykiado ; Poland: Czarna Owca ; Romania: Humanitas

The 12 Best Books of Spring: Julie Orringer's gripping new novel sees her revisiting Nazi-occupied Europe - territory first explored in her bestselling novel The Invisible Bridge - and is inspired by the story of Varian Fry, an American journalist who helped artists in France who were at risk of being turned over to the Nazis. Orringer writes about this dark corner of history with her characteristic grace.