Waiting for Robert Capa: A Novel

by Susana Fortes, Adriana V. Lopez

Overview

Susana Fortes offers a gorgeously written, English Patient-style novel about the real-life romance between two photojournalists furiously in love: Robert Capa and Gerda Taro. During the Spanish Civil War, Capa and Taro risked everything documenting Francisco Franco’s Fascist uprising—even as they risked everything for love. The two artists’ passion stands out in sharp relief against the terrifying realities of war in this internationally acclaimed novel, a book that will resonate with fans of Possession, Loving Frank, Suite Francaise, and Pan’s Labyrinth. With a film adaptation already underway from producer Michael Mann (Public Enemies, The Insider, Manhunter, Collateral), Fortes’ Waiting for Robert Capa is a tale that will touch millions of hearts, mixing the poignancy of a timeless love story with the immediacy of a vivid snapshot from a bygone era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062000385
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/27/2011
Series:	P.S. Series
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Susana Fortes is a native of Spain. Her novels have been translated into almost twenty languages, and she is the winner of numerous literary awards, including the Premio Nuevos Narradores, the Premio Primavera, the Premio de la Crítica, and, for Waiting for Robert Capa, the Premio Fernando Lara. She is a regular contributor to El País as well as various cinema and literature magazines.

Susana Fortes es licenciada en Geografía e Historia. En 1994 ganó el Premio Nuevos Narradores con su primera novela, Querido Corto Maltés. Luego fue finalista del Premio Primavera 2001 con Fronteras de arena y finalista del Premio Planeta 2003 con El amante albanés, una novela que se convirtió en bestseller en España. La traducción en inglés, The Albanian Affairs, ha conseguido el tercer premio del Book of the Year Awards 2006. Sus obras han sido traducidas a diez idiomas. Actualmente vive en Valencia, donde compagina la enseñanza con el periodismo y la literatura.

Adriana Lopez was the founding editor of Críticas magazine, Publishers Weekly's Spanish-language sister publication. Lopez's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, among other publications. A member of the PEN American Center, she lives in New York City.

What People are Saying About This

Jay Parini

“Waiting for Robert Capa moves artfully between fact and fiction, with a stunningly evoked backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. Susana Fortes is the real thing: a world-class novelist who brings all of her considerable talents to bear on this brief, affecting story.”

Editorial Reviews

Waiting for Robert Capa moves artfully between fact and fiction, with a stunningly evoked backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. Susana Fortes is the real thing: a world-class novelist who brings all of her considerable talents to bear on this brief, affecting story.” — Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and The Passages of H.M.

From the Publisher

Waiting for Robert Capa moves artfully between fact and fiction, with a stunningly evoked backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. Susana Fortes is the real thing: a world-class novelist who brings all of her considerable talents to bear on this brief, affecting story.

Jay Parini

Love and photography bring two young exiles together in this based-on-fact real-life tragic romance. When two young refugees meet in Paris in 1935, the world seems to be falling apart. Both Gerta Pohorylle and André Friedmann are Jews, exiles from the expanding Nazi regime (she is German, he Hungarian). Both are scraping by, enjoying a wild bohemian last gasp as the city fills with other penniless refugees and the native Parisians turn increasingly hostile, and their alliance is at first one of survival. She takes him on as a project, dressing him for success as a photojournalist. He, in turn, teaches her his art: " 'You have to be there,' he'd say, 'glued to your prey, lying in wait, in order to be able to shoot at the exact moment.' " They become lovers and adopt new names, and as Gerda Taro and Robert Capa travel to Spain to document what is becoming a brutal civil war. In that harsh land, they both blossom as artists and war journalists, their bohemian principles made flesh, before war catches up with them. In this short historical novel, Spanish novelist Fortes captures the complexity of pre–World War II Europe. Anarchists and Dadaists bond and then fall out, as various groups scramble for scraps and young people try to have fun. The personalities of the two main figures are fully imagined, rooted in existing biographical works, as are many of their peers. The burgeoning war also comes alive in poetic terms: "In the distance, Madrid was a white rabbit at the mercy of the hunting hounds." At times, however, the need to reassert the journalistic reality of these characters interferes, as awkward identifications disrupt the prose ("Gerda could still see the writer Gustav Regler's face as he was being carried out of the rubble"). Still, this vivid novel gives us a snapshot of a continent falling into chaos. Flawed but striking, this short novel shines a light on artists in times of love and war.

Kirkus Reviews