Julie Orringer is the author of 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. In her historical novel The Flight Portfolio (Knopf), Julie Orringer weaves invention and facts as she follows the efforts of one Varian Fry who, in 1940, 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, Fry 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. The Boston Globe called The Flight Portfolio “Magnificent … Gorgeous… Important… a deeply researched, almost unbearably tense, bruised-knuckle hybrid. Part real history and part love story, it’s also a deeply moral work, asking tough question about what matters most to us personally — and to the world.”
