The Two Hotel Francforts - Softcover

David Leavitt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 140881515X ISBN 13: 9781408815151

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt Limited, 2013

Synopsis

It is the summer of 1940, and Lisbon is the only neutral port left in Europe - a city filled with spies and refugees of every nationality, tipping back absinthe to pass the time until they can escape. Awaiting safe passage to New York, two couples meet: Pete and Julia Winters, expatriate Americans fleeing their sedate life in Paris; and Edward and Iris Freleng, sophisticated, wealthy, bohemian and beset by all the social and sexual anxieties of their class. As Portugal's neutrality and the world's future hang in the balance, the hidden threads of their lives begin to come loose. This journey will change the four of them irrevocably.

About this title

About the Author

David Leavitt's fiction has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize, the National Book Critics' Circle Award and the LA Times Fiction Prize, and shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper's and Vogue, among other publications. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he is Professor of English at the University of Florida and edits the literary magazine Subtropics.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* With his first novel, The Lost Language of Cranes (1986), Leavitt claimed attention as a serious fiction writer, and the publication of his first collection of short stories, Family Dancing (1984), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, alerted readers that he was to be taken as a talented writer in the short form as well. Leavitt’s new novel establishes a brisk pace from page one, corresponding to the jittery atmosphere of the place and time in which it is set: the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, which, in the summer of 1940, is the only neutral port left in Europe. Refugees from the German takeover of most of the continent are gathered in Lisbon awaiting a chance to escape the war’s dangers. Leavitt focuses on two married couples as they pass the tense time until an American ship, the Manhattan, will arrive to carry them and other fortunate ticket-holders to the U.S. With one of the men narrating the novel’s events, recalling them from the distance of several years, we follow the couples as they wait for relief from the dangers closing in and, in the meantime, play their own game of intrigue, not on an international diplomatic level but on a personal and even more confounding level: the two wives having to deal with an affair that quickly ignites between their husbands. The result is a dramatic story that Leavitt weaves with compelling authority and empathy. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The publicity campaign being accorded Leavitt’s new book will include book-club advertising, availability of group reading guides, an author tour, and national review coverage. --Brad Hooper

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt Limited
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 140881515X
• ISBN 13: 9781408815151
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272