Hotel Florida

Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War

"A vivid, well-paced story of the awfulness of war and of the complex motives of those who report on it."—The Wall Street Journal

"Romantic . . . kaleidoscopic . . . adds to the cold hard facts—as well as the enduring mystique—of the Spanish Civil War."—Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

Madrid, 1936. In a city blasted by civil war, six people meet and find their lives changed forever. Ernest Hemingway, his career stalled, his marriage sour, hopes this war will give him fresh material and new romance; Martha Gellhorn, an ambitious novice journalist hungry for love and experience, thinks she will find both with Hemingway in Spain. Robert Capa and Gerda Taro, idealistic young photographers based in Paris, are inventing modern photojournalism as they capture history in the making. And Arturo Barea, Madrid's foreign press chief, and Ilsa Kulcsar, his Austrian deputy, are struggling to balance truth-telling with loyalty to their sometimes compromised cause—a struggle that places both of them in peril. Hotel Florida traces the tangled wartime destinies of these three couples against the backdrop of a critical moment in history.

From the raw material of unpublished letters and diaries, official documents, and recovered reels of film, Amanda Vaill has created a narrative of love and reinvention that is, finally, a story about truth: finding it out, telling it, and living it—whatever the cost.

©2014 Amanda Vaill (P)2023 Tantor