The Art Spy
The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland
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- 20,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
* Library Journal Best Books of 2025 * New York Public Library Best Books of 2025 * Hyperallergic Favorite Art Books of 2025 * Publishers Weekly Best Books of Summer 2025 * BookBub Best Non-Fiction Release of the Season * Newsday’s Top Must-Read Book for Summer * Christian Science Monitor Best Book of May 2025 * Longlisted for the 2025 American Library in Paris Book Award *
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 world's most treasured masterpieces.
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 truth—a 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. While Hitler was amassing stolen art for his future Führermuseum, Valland, his undercover adversary, secretly worked to stop him. She came face to face with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, passed crucial information to the Resistance network, and faced death during the last hours of Liberation Day.
At the same time, a young Free French soldier, Alexandre Rosenberg , was fighting his way to Paris with the Allied forces battling to liberate France. Alexandre's father was the exclusive art dealer for Picasso, Matisse, George Braque, and Fernand Léger. The Nazis had taken everything from their family—their art collection, their nationality, their gallery, and their home in Paris.
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, and Frida Kahlo, through the tension-riddled cities of Europe on the eve of war, to the harrowing years of the Nazi occupation of France when brave people such as Valland and Rosenberg risked everything to fight monstrous evil.
In the spirit of Hidden Figures, with the sweeping narrative of The Rape of Europa, The Art Spy is an inspiration for us all—an extraordinary tale of courage in a time of violence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Young (Secret New York) recaps the exploits of French Resistance hero Rose Valland in this thrilling saga. Valland (1898–1980) was a curator at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris when the Nazis invaded France, occupied the museum, and began using it as a sorting center for thousands of pieces of stolen art from across Europe. In Young's vivid telling, a wily Valland made herself appear as nonthreatening and essential as possible, retaining her position in the museum for years while keeping meticulous secret records of the provenance and destination of every piece of art. Her notes made possible the recovery of many artworks after the war (by Valland herself in many cases, as she was commissioned by the U.S. Army to hunt them down). Young's dramatic recreation of Valland's war years depicts her as a cool operator: at one point, she was banned from carrying a notebook and had to commit her notes to memory—no easy task when surrounded by paranoid Nazis, who would routinely lash out, accusing her of "everything sabotage and theft" to "signaling to the enemy" (all of which, Young notes, were true). Repeatedly sacked, Valland "talked her way back in" every time by calmly explaining she was a nobody—a mere lowly museum employee (when in reality she was one of the top art historians in France). Readers will relish this riveting tale of a clever war hero playing the long game against bumbling fascists.
