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Marseille 1940

Uwe Wittstock

June 1940: Hitler’s army has conquered France. The Gestapo are searching for Heinrich Mann and Franz Werfel, for Hannah Arendt, Lion Feuchtwanger and countless others who found asylum in France in 1933. Meanwhile, an American called Varian Fry is on his way to Marseille to save as many of them as he can. Uwe Wittstock tells the disturbing story of their flight and the deadly dangers surrounding it.

1940 is the most dramatic year in German literary history. In Nice, Heinrich Mann listens to the news on Radio London as the air raid sirens sound. Anna Seghers flees Paris on foot with her children. Lion Feuchtwanger is a prisoner in a French internment camp as the SS units draw nearer. They all eventually end up in Marseille, hoping to find a route to freedom. This is where Walter Benjamin hands over his last essay to Hannah Arendt before setting out to flee across the Pyrenees. Many German and Austrian writers, intellectuals and artists cross paths here. And this is also where Varian Fry and his comrades risk life and limb to try and smuggle them out of France. Uwe Wittstock’s rich scene-setting and sensitive narrative tell a story of incredible courage and profound desperation, of defiant hope, and of humanity in dark times.

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