On the whole, though, this is historical fiction at its best. It conveys how places smell and sound with such rich detail. The sorts of descriptive passages one skims over in other books are so gorgeous and evocative here that they warrant reading two or even three times. The story of an accidental hero torn between impossible choices is utterly compelling. I’m convinced, if I wasn’t already, that Julie Orringer is among our finest living writers, and this is my top novel of 2019 so far. Magnificent. . . . Brilliantly conceived, impeccably crafted, and showcasing Orringer’s extraordinary gifts, this is destined to become a classic.”— Publishers Weekly(starred review) I have only read 20% of this novel but am setting it aside for now. I was so excited to learn months ago that Julie Orringer had written a novel about the the work of Varian Fry, a hero of mine. I started reading it as soon as it was published. To my dismay I find that Orringer fabricated a male lover for Fry and fictionalized the essence of the man himself. I wasn't sure about whom I was reading but it didn't sound like the same Varian Fry I had come to know while reading biographies about him. What particularly rankles is Orringer's preoccupation with and dramatic rendering of the love story that drew the focus away from the story of saving refugees. For me, that story is thrilling enough without romantic complications. gray-green scrub and toothedwith great molars of limestone; often the ubiquitous lavender and almond gave way to low, hostile cactus, gnarled kermes oak, rusty lentisk, or wind-stunted pistachio. T he sky was the washed-out blue-green of weatherbeaten copper; the few cloudsoverhead seemed wrung out and dry.

Adding in color and texture through her own imagining, Orringer makes her lead character come to life; he is sometimes funny, sometimes serious, sometimes impetuous and sometimes deeply thoughtful. He is full of quirks and shortcomings, yet he is also entirely sympathetic. If you are looking to get lost in a vivid, deeply feeling work of fiction, look no further. The Flight Portfolio will take you on a journey. It will make you think, make you wonder, fill you with joy... continued The BAD. Orringer chose to have Fry engage in a gay love affair that is pure fiction. There WAS a rumor that Fry might be gay, but this fictional relationship padded an overlong narrative that would have benefited by being a shorter book. Julie’s writing is rich, poignant- suspenseful- emotionally felt with indelible characters so vivid and human - that she totally restored my passion for Historical Fiction.After discovering the Villa has been bugged, Varian has 24 hours to fill DuBois' ship with refugees. Varian convinces Bingham to rapidly forge the necessary visas. Albert and Paul witness the Nazis deporting prisoners out of Marseille. Patterson discovers Paul's resistance cell. He informs the police and Paul is swiftly arrested. Patterson's secretary, Lorene Letoret, is a spy for the Gestapo, who bugged the Villa. 257 refugees escape to Martinique thanks to the ERC's hard work. Mary Jayne and Albert plan to marry and travel to the US. Tensions rise as Germany exerts its influence on France and avenues of escape disappear. Marc and Bella Chagall, who previously refused to leave, finally agree to flee Marseille. Mary Jayne provides Albert, Petit, Lisa, and Hans with weapons so they can rescue Paul. The group intercepts a prison convoy, freeing Paul and others. However, Petit and a rabbi are killed during the rescue. Varian decides to accompany the Chagalls to the US, and Thomas sadly realizes he's leaving for good. Albert says goodbye to Mary Jayne as she leaves France and he stays to fight in the resistance. But isn’t that her prerogative? Isn’t it the historical novelist’s right and privilege to decide what to omit, change, or invent for her narrative purposes? Maybe. But then, perhaps, we must turn to the reader. For it occurs to me that the novelistic right may produce something beyond the artistic creation itself: an invitation for the reader who seeks to be educated as well as entertained to investigate further. Varian Fry and his group encountered many difficulties along the way. They constantly dealt with corrupt bureaucracies, the intolerant Vichy government, a looming threat of the Gestapo and the impossible task of obtaining visas.

Acțiunea romanului "Portofoliul fugii" este plasată în Marsilia anului 1940 și ni-l prezintă pe Varian Fry, un jurnalist american care preia conducerea "Energency Rescue Committee", organizație al cărei scop este să scoată din Franța Republicii de la Vichy elita culturală europeană urmărită de naziști (pictori și scriitori). Lista celor pe care trebuie să-i caute și să-i salveze este deja redactată, dar cei care au nevoie de ajutor sunt mult mai mulți, Varian fiind pus astfel în situația îngrozitoare de a alege, într-un fel și altul, cine trăiește și cine moare. Întrucât fondurile financiare sunt precare, el va crea "Portofoliul fugii", o selecție de lucrări realizate și donate de cei aflați în pericol, aceasta urmând să fie trimisă, expusă și licitată în SUA. Planul pare a fi unul fără cusur, dar totul va fi dat peste cap în momentul în care își va face apariția Elliott Grant, un bărbat cu care Varian a avut o legătură foarte puternică în urmă cu 12 ani și pe care îl credea mort. Extraordinary. . . . Orringer has delivered a story with a splendid cast of characters and an intoxicating portrait of a time and place. . . . There’s suspense and tragedy, unexpected twists and deliverance.”— The Seattle Times 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. Tartaglione, Nancy (13 September 2021). "Netflix & 'Unorthodox' Creator Anna Winger Form Partnership; Set 'Transatlantic' As First Project". Deadline . Retrieved 10 February 2023. GAZETTE: A key theme in the book involves this question of how you can value one person’s life over another’s. The characters struggle with their work, which involves choosing whom to save during the Holocaust. How did you decide to incorporate this into the story?Casting was reportedly under way as of January 2022. The cast were announced in March 2022, with Gillian Jacobs, Grégory Montel, Cory Michael Smith, and Corey Stoll set to star alongside Lucas Englander, Ralph Amoussou, Deleila Piasko, and Amit Rahav. [8]

The first lady agreed to help procure emergency visas for Jewish refugees trapped inside Nazi occupied Europe. Mrs. Roosevelt convinced her husband to force the US State Department to provide emergency visas & bypass the restrictive US immigration system. These visas enabled Fry’s team to rescue hundreds of Jews on their lists. What was the Flight Portfolio? In 1940, Varian Fry, American scholar and historian, arrives in Marseilles from New York facing an impossible task: pry a handful of gifted refugees out of Vichy France and get them to safety. These unfortunates, mostly stateless Jews, belong to the intellectual and artistic cream of Europe—Marc Chagall, André Breton, and Walter Benjamin, for starters. But the collaborationist Vichy regime would just as soon deliver them to their German overlords, and American officialdom, patently anti-Semitic, wants no part of saving anyone.He tells Eileen that he has a few ( ha- we know it’s much more than a few), projects that he can’t abandon. He feels he must stay longer. He shares with Eileen that he has run into an old friend - Elliott Grant - ( it’s been 12 years since he has seen him). Set during the Holocaust and World War II, Julie Orringer’s novel The Flight Portfolio (2019) retells the true story of Varian Fry, an editor and journalist who moved to Marseilles, France to join the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC). The ERC embarked on a multinational rescue mission, finding Jewish and political dissident artists and intellectuals all over Europe and moving them outside Hitler’s grasp. Notable individuals saved under Fry’s brave leadership included Jewish political scientist Hannah Arendt, Jewish artist Marc Chagall, Surrealist pioneers Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Ernst. To add realistic dialogue and intrigue to the limited records that exist of Fry’s life, Orringer focuses on his friendship with a fictional college friend Elliott Grant, who appears in Marseille in the midst of Fry’s valiant attempt to stave off the artistic destruction of Hitler’s regime. The novel has been praised for its compelling mixture of fiction and fact, illuminating their dual role in transmitting historical truth. 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, André Breton, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Marc Chagall. a b c d Wilson, Matthew (3 April 2023). "The man behind a covert WW2 operation". BBC Culture . Retrieved 7 April 2023. Chagall shook his head. “My apologies, Monsieur Fry. I’m sorry you had to come all this way in vain. But perhaps you’d like to have a look at the studio before you go—if you’ve finished, that is.”

It does become more of a morality tale presenting the question: Are some individuals worth saving more than others? The story is woven quite tightly around this question.If we could pin down the moments when our lives bifurcate into before and after—if we could pause the progression of millisecond, catch ourselves at the point before we slip over the precipice—if we could choose to remain suspended in time-amber, our lives intact, our hearts unbroken, our foreheads unlined, our nights full of undisturbed sleep—would we slip, or would we choose the amber?” I melted when Varian included an e.e. Cummings poem to his wife - which he once gave her years before as part of his Valentines card. I loved the poem. I ended up working with two marvelous fellows, Victoria Baena and Anna Hagen, the editor and the fiction editor of The Harvard Advocate. Both are fiction writers themselves, so they already understood a lot of what went into the process of engaging history in a novel. The research they conducted was essential to my project, and continued to help for years afterward. They created a timeline of events in Varian Fry’s 13 months in Marseille, and assembled mini-biographies of the writers and artists he saved. They combed through his student file at Harvard, a rich trove that contained, among other things, his Harvard application, letters from his professors and the dean and his parents, all his grade transcripts, and a record of every place he lived in Cambridge. Anna and Victoria spent a lot of time capturing important facts, transcribing letters, and cataloguing documents online so they would be available to me even when I left Harvard.