The Flight Portfolio, Hardcover

"Bighearted, gorgeous, historical, suspenseful, everything you want a novel to be" (--Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less), a new book inspired by the World War II story you've never heard--the real-life quest of an unlikely hero to save the lives and work of Europe's great minds from the impending Holocaust

In 1940, Varian Fry traveled to Marseille carrying three thousand dollars and a list of imperiled artists and writers he hoped to help escape within a few weeks. Instead, he stayed more than a year, working to procure false documents, amass emergency funds, and arrange journeys across Spain and Portugal, where the refugees would embark for safer ports. His many clients included Hannah Arendt, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Marc Chagall, and the race against time to save them is a tale of forbidden love, high-stakes adventure, and unimaginable courage.

"Masterfully crafted and impossible to put down, The Flight Portfolio offers a testament to the enduring power of art, and love, in any form." --Entertainment Weekly

Julie Orringer is the author of two award-winning books: The Invisible Bridge, a novel, and the short-story collection How to Breathe Underwater, both New York Times Notable Books. She is the winner of The Paris Review's Plimpton Prize and the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn.