Michelle Young

The Art Spy (eBook, ePUB)

The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

A riveting and stylish saga set in Paris during World War II, THE ART SPY uncovers how an unlikely heroine infiltrated the Nazi leadership to save the cultural legacy of the West.

On August 25, 1944, Rose Valland, a woman of quiet daring, found herself in a desperate position. From the windows of her beloved Jeu de Paume museum, where she had worked and ultimately spied, she could see the battle to liberate Paris thundering around her. The Jeu de Paume, co-opted by Nazi leadership, was now the Germans' final line of defense. Would the museum curator be killed before she could tell the trutha story that would mean nothing less than saving humanity's cultural inheritance?

Based on troves of previously undiscovered documents, The Art Spy chronicles the brave actions of the key Resistance spy in the heart of the Nazi's art looting headquarters in the French capital. A veritable female Monuments Man, Valland has, until now, been written out of the annals, despite bearing witness to history's largest art theft. While Hitler was amassing stolen art for his future Führermuseum, Valland, his undercover adversary, secretly worked to stop him.

At every stage of World War II, Valland was front and center. She came face to face with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, passed crucial information to the Resistance network, put herself deliberately in harm's way to protect the museum and her staff, and faced death during the last hours of Liberation Day. She also singlehandedly provided information to stop the last train of looted artworksbearing paintings by Picasso, Monet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Braque, Degas, Modigliani, and Toulouse-Lautrecfrom leaving France.

Vivid and atmospheric, The Art Spy moves from the glittering days of pre-War Paris, home to geniuses of modern culture, including Picasso, Josephine Baker, Coco Chanel, Le Corbusier, and Frida Kahlo, through the tension-riddled cities and resorts of Europe on the eve of war, to the harrowing years of the Nazi occupation of France when brave people such as Valland risked everything to fight monstrous evil.

In the spirit of Hidden Figures, with the sweeping narrative of The Rape of Europa and the depth of The Resistance Quartet, The Art Spy is an extraordinary tale of a female hero whose courage and tenacity in a time of violence and terror is an inspiration for us all.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: HarperCollins
• Seitenzahl: 400
• Erscheinungstermin: 13. Mai 2025
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780063295919
• Artikelnr.: 72271009

Autorenporträt

Michelle Young is an award-winning journalist, author, and professor whose writing on looted and lost art has appeared in Hyperallergic, The Forward, and The Wilson Quarterly. She is a graduate of Harvard College in the History of Art and Architecture and holds a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she is a Professor of Architecture. She is the founder of the publication Untapped New York. She divides her time between New York City and Paris.

Rezensionen

"In her masterful biography of one of the greatest unknown heroines of World War II, Michelle Young brings the French art historian Rose Valland to brilliant life and finally gives her the credit she is due. Daily risking her life during the war to document the Nazis' looting of tens of thousands of French works of art, the quiet, unassuming Valland then helped locate and return the vast majority of those treasures after the conflict. A gripping account of Valland's passionate one-woman fight to preserve France's artistic heritage, The Art Spy is a must-read." - Lynne Olson, New York Times bestselling author of Citizens of London and Madame Fourcade's Secret War

"In the meticulously researched and beautifully written The Art Spy, Young brings to life a forgotten heroine of World War II, one who richly deserves this posthumous portrayal. Rose Valland's courage and ingenuity in the face of Nazi brutality is staggering, as is the shocking extent to which the Germans hunted down, looted, sold, and even burned irreplaceable works of art, many of which have never been recovered. A must read, and highly recommended." - Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue

"At last, the greatest spy of wartime Paris has her story told. Working in a museum turned fortress where Nazi occupiers were staging the biggest art theft in history, Rose Valland played a game against the Reich with impossibly high stakes. At play were lives, the world's masterpieces, and the course of the war itself. Michelle Young writes with the clarity of a historian and the pacing of a thriller." - Elyse Graham, author of Book and Dagger

"Rose Valland might have remained a shadowy footnote in history in less skilled hands. But at the heart of Michelle Young's thrilling debut-packed with the intrigue of a spy novel, the tension of a wartime thriller, and the vivid detail of great narrative history-is groundbreaking research that restores Valland in all her depth, revealing a figure as richly drawn as the masterpieces she fought to save. With The Art Spy, Young arrives as a major new voice in narrative nonfiction." - Laurie Gwen Shapiro, author of The Stowaway

"The Art Spy puts readers in the front row as a long-overlooked treasure is uncrated. Michelle Young brushes the dust away, page by page, to reveal a WWII hero of quiet brilliance and considerable sang froid. Rose Valland, patriotic protector of France's patrimony, deserves this fine showcase." - Christopher C. Gorham, author of The Confidante

"An engaging read about almost-unthinkable courage that also features malicious foes, espionage, and art masterpieces. An unmissable gem." - Gerri Chanel, author of Saving Mona Lisa

"After four years of all-out research in France and America using many unpublished documents, Michelle Young finally allows us to bring Rose Valland to life and discover the important role played by her partner Joyce Heer, during fifty years of their life together. After thirty years, the goal set by the Association 'La Mémoire de Rose Valland' is finally achieved through The Art Spy: to promote Rose Valland's work and bring her out of the shadows." - Association La Mémoire de Rose Valland

"Finally! The untold story of Rose Valland, whose mousey appearance and self-effacing demeanor disguised, like Clark Kent to Superman, a woman with a secret life in the nightclubs of Paris, who, with intelligence and courage, fought by day to save the capital's art treasures from the German occupiers in World War II Paris." - Tilar Mazzeo, bestselling author of Irena's Children