Overview

""Rosemary Sullivan goes beyond the confines of Air-Bel to tell a fuller story of France during the tense years from 1933 to 1941. . . . A moving tale of great sacrifice in tumultuous times."" -- Publishers Weekly Paris 1940. Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Consuelo de Saint-Exupery, and scores of other cultural elite denounced as enemies of the conquering Third Reich, live in daily fear of arrest, deportation, and death. Their only salvation is the Villa Air-Bel, a chateau outside Marseille where a group of young people, financed by a private American relief organization, will go to extraordinary lengths to keep them alive. In Villa Air-Bel, Rosemary Sullivan sheds light on this suspenseful, dramatic, and intriguing story, introducing the brave men and women who use every means possible to stave off the Nazis and the Vichy officials, and goes inside the chateau's walls to uncover the private worlds and the web of relationships its remarkable inhabitants developed.

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9780060732516

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Reviews

Villa Air-Bel is a remarkable achievement -- National Post (Toronto)

[Rosemary Sullivan] goes beyond the confines of Air-Bel to tell a fuller story of France during the tense years from 1933 to 1941. She intelligently spreads the fractured narrative, with its huge cast of players constantly coming and going, over 60 brief chapters. What's palpable is the welter of shock, fear, world-weariness, cynicism and misplaced idealism evinced by the villa's transient residents as they apprehensively awaited their fate...a moving tale of great sacrifice in tumultuous times. --Publishers Weekly [Villa Air-Bel] bring[s] to life those committed Americans and Europeans who risked all to help others...A complex tale showing how hope and courage flourish, even in the toxic soil of totalitarianism. --Kirkus Reviews A moving and richly detailed account. --Boston Globe Beautifully written in a style that is novelistic, Villa Air-Bel brings to life the story of this rescue through experiences of a community of artists who spent time in the Villa Air-Bel chateau...The book is interesting and evocative and provides nuances and texture to one of the untold stories of rescue during the Holocaust. --Jewish Book World Gripping...Sullivan captures the tense atmosphere of France as the Germans invaded and the fear and anxiety of the intellectuals, some held in detention camps and some who ignored the danger until it was nearly too late. --Booklist The great virtue of Sullivan's account of these dark times is the meticulous research that informs it, the uncovering of memoirs, photos, and other documents in numerous Canadian and American libraries as well as archives in France and private collections....Sullivan's Villa Air-Bel sings of the good deeds of those heroes of so long ago. It memorializes the great men and women of the rescue team who were bastions of humanity in a time of man's most shameful display of sadistic cruelty. Villa Air-Bel is a most welcome book, a triumph of the human spirit. --Philadelphia Inquirer There was an atmosphere of jittery uncertainty and apprehension that Canadian writer Rosemary Sullivan captures to chilling effect in 'Villa Air-Bel.' ... Sullivan, a poet and professor of English at the University of Toronto, centers her moving and richly detailed account of that time of anxiety at the villa, which was, she writes, like 'a stone interrupting the stream, ' a fixed point in a dangerous world. --Boston Globe Villa Air-Bel is a most welcome book, a triumph of the human spirit. --Philadelphia Inquirer With tremendous suspense and emotional pull, Sullivan recounts the little-known story of Varian Fry, the intrepid young American who sheltered [dozens of artists and intellectuals] helping them and hundreds more escape from Vichy France. --Vogue According to Rosemary Sullivan's gripping new book, 'Villa Air-Bel, ' France had become 'a country trapped in the totalitarian vise of irrational hatred' with its own government as terrifying as the Nazis....Another hero is the Villa Air-Bel itself, a run-down 18-room mansion in the suburbs of Marseille...Her description of the resident's attempts at establishing a normal life there--the meals, the improvised games, the passionate discussions--are the heart of this book.--San Francisco Chronicle

She's got style. --Philadelphia Inquirer Her scene-by-scene evocation of life at the house reads like an updated Chekhov comedy laced with horror. --Financial Times Sullivan brilliantly interweaves personal histories with terrifying tales --Sunday Times (London) This is a magnificent, complex narrative of courage, folly, and complacency...a beautifully narrated book. --Telegraph With tremendous suspense and emotional pull, Sullivan recounts the little-known story of Varian Fry --Vogue [In Villa Air-Bel] stories are told with passion. --The Advocate Villa Air-Bel is a most welcome book, a triumph of the human spirit --Philadelphia Inquirer Sullivan has written a book of great detail and complexity, though one that is full of darkness. --Quill & Quire A complex tale showing how hope and courage flourish, even in the toxic soil of totalitarianism. --Kirkus Reviews Villa Air-Bel is a remarkable achievement --National Post (Toronto) A moving and richly detailed account --Boston Globe a moving tale of great sacrifice in tumultuous times. --Publishers Weekly [Sullivan] manages to combine solid scholarship with a snappy writing style...a history book that is completely riveting --Vancouver Sun It's history, it's intrigue. It's nonfiction. It's a real page-turner. --New York Magazine: Ask a Shop Clerk: Holiday Edition, Carol Wald Deft handling of a twisted plot with a large number of characters. --The Forward the style is beautifully clear and concise....Sullivan's book should be mandatory reading. --Irish Times

Author Information

ROSEMARY SULLIVAN, the author of fifteen books, is best known for her recent biography Stalin's Daughter. Published in twenty-three countries, it won the Biographers International Organization Plutarch Award and was a finalist for the PEN /Bograd Weld Award for Biography and the National Books Critics Circle Award. Her book Villa Air-Bel was awarded the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem Award in Holocaust History. She is a professor emeritus at the university of Toronto and has lectured in Canada, the U.S., Europe, India, and Latin America.

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