Why read The Flight Portfolio?

Book cover of The Flight Portfolio

Book description

Now a major Netflix drama.

1940, France. In the middle of a devastating war, how many lives can you save?

Varian Fry, a young American journalist, arrives in Marseille armed only with three thousand dollars and a list of writers, thinkers and artists he hopes to rescue - so long…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Flight Portfolio as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

David Wright Faladé

Author

I'm drawn to WWII stories, both historic and purely fictional, and Orringer's novel is the best of both. I learned a real-life story I did not know--about the great efforts of Varian Fry to extricate Jewish artists and intellectuals from Nazi Europe through southern France (among them, Hannah Arendt, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, and many more).

But I was also completely engrossed by the story of forbidden love at its core, between Fry, the married New Yorker who spearheads the effort against the Nazis and their Vichy henchmen, and his former secret lover, Elliott Grant, while…

From David's 3 favorite reads in 2024.