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A spellbinding story of love amid the devastation of the Spanish Civil War
Madrid, 1936. In a city blasted by a civil war that many fear will cross borders and engulf Europe-a conflict one writer will call "the decisive thing of the century"-six people meet and find their lives changed forever. Ernest Hemingway, his career stalled, his marriage sour, hopes that this war will give him fresh material and new romance; Martha Gellhorn, an ambitious novice journalist hungry for love and experience, thinks she will find both with Hemingway in Spain. Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, idealistic young photographers based in Paris, want to capture history in the making and are inventing modern photojournalism in the process. And, Arturo Barea, chief of the Spanish government's foreign press office, and Ilsa Kulcsar, his Austrian deputy, are struggling to balance truth-telling with loyalty to their sometimes compromised cause-a struggle that places both of them in peril.
Beginning with the cloak-and-dagger plot that precipitated the first gunshots of the war and moving forward month by month to the end of the conflict. Hotel Florida traces the tangled and disparate wartime destinies of these three couples against the backdrop of a critical moment in history: a moment that called forth both the best and the worst of those caught up in it. In this noir landscape of spies, soldiers, revolutionaries, and artists, the shadow line between truth and falsehood sometimes became faint indeed-your friend could be your enemy and honesty could get you (or someone else) killed.
Years later, Hemingway would say, "It is very dangerous to write the truth in war, and the truth is very dangerous to come by." In Hotel Florida, from the raw material of unpublished letters and diaries, official documents, and recovered reels of film, the celebrated biographer Amanda Vaill has created a narrative of love and reinvention that is, finally, a story about truth: finding it, telling it, and living it-whatever the cost.
Madrid, 1936. In a city blasted by a civil war that many fear will cross borders and engulf Europe-a conflict one writer will call "the decisive thing of the century"-six people meet and find their lives changed forever. Ernest Hemingway, his career stalled, his marriage sour, hopes that this war will give him fresh material and new romance; Martha Gellhorn, an ambitious novice journalist hungry for love and experience, thinks she will find both with Hemingway in Spain. Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, idealistic young photographers based in Paris, want to capture history in the making and are inventing modern photojournalism in the process. And, Arturo Barea, chief of the Spanish government's foreign press office, and Ilsa Kulcsar, his Austrian deputy, are struggling to balance truth-telling with loyalty to their sometimes compromised cause-a struggle that places both of them in peril.
Beginning with the cloak-and-dagger plot that precipitated the first gunshots of the war and moving forward month by month to the end of the conflict. Hotel Florida traces the tangled and disparate wartime destinies of these three couples against the backdrop of a critical moment in history: a moment that called forth both the best and the worst of those caught up in it. In this noir landscape of spies, soldiers, revolutionaries, and artists, the shadow line between truth and falsehood sometimes became faint indeed-your friend could be your enemy and honesty could get you (or someone else) killed.
Years later, Hemingway would say, "It is very dangerous to write the truth in war, and the truth is very dangerous to come by." In Hotel Florida, from the raw material of unpublished letters and diaries, official documents, and recovered reels of film, the celebrated biographer Amanda Vaill has created a narrative of love and reinvention that is, finally, a story about truth: finding it, telling it, and living it-whatever the cost.
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Reviews
"Fascinating chracters breeze through Vaill's pages as they once drifted through that lobby, and as they did in her stellar biography of Sara and Gerald Murphy and their sparkling set, Everybody Was So Young, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In war-torn Spain, she's again in her element, galloping through intrigues that made the world turn . . . Vaill calls Hotel Florida a "reconstruction," based on letters, diaries, biographies and filmed evidence that paint an electric collective portrait. Instead of offering criticial analysis, she relies on exquisitely researched anecdotes to tell the story, and she revels in the poignancy of strobe-lit details . . . Vaill's account of the war and its voluntary witnesses validates our need for narrative in the face of atrocity--something beyond propaganda, and, at times, as essential as food or shelter."
Jessica Kerwin Jenkins, The New York Times Book Review
"Vaill isn't after anything as quixotic as trying to 'set the record straight' on the Spanish Civil War; instead, she delves deeply into the lives of three couples whose chronicling of the war shaped public perception . . . What Vaill seems to be mulling over in this book is the age-old question of what war does to people . . . Hotel Florida adds to the cold hard facts--as well as to the enduring mystique--of the Spanish Civil War."
Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
"Hotel Florida . . . is well researched, strongly paced and vividly placed, adroitly interlaces its dispiriting stories, and . . . tell you more of value than do many more earnest works."
Jeremy Treglown, Times Literary Supplement