Wrong Passport (Paperback)

Paperback. This country is like a little island, where the people live so happily, as if nothing was wrong with the world. When Ralph Brewster wrote those lines, in the summer of 1943, Hungarys involvement in WWII was still barely felt in Budapest. Less than a year later the Nazis took over. Born an American but given Italian nationality as a child (the Wrong Passport of the title) Brewster refused to return home to Italy to fight for Mussolini. Instead, he went into hiding in Budapest and his story of life in a country at war, resorting to ever more desperate measures to dodge detection, makes fascinating reading. As Fascists tighten their grip and the Soviets begin their advance, the once-carefree city of coffee houses, concert halls and thermal baths is torn apart and Brewsters world disintegrates, together with that of his extraordinary cast of characters: the Archimandrite, the art-dealer spy, the cinema impresario, the Jewish philosophy student who refuses to wear the yellow star and the real-life English Patient. A story of dodging detection in war-torn Budapest. Originally published in 1954, Wrong Passport is reissued now for the first time by Blue Danube.With extensive notes bringing the context and historic background to life and tracing the subsequent fortunes of Brewster and his friends. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.