Waiting for Robert Capa

A gorgeously written, ENGLISH PATIENT-style novel about the real-life romance between the war photographers Robert Capa and Gerda Taro during the Spanish Civil War. Optioned to be the next film by Michael Mann (PUBLIC ENEMIES, THE INSIDER, MANHUNTER, COLLATERAL).

Love, war and photography marked their lives. They were young, anti-Fascist, good-looking, and nonconformist. They had everything in life, and they put everything at risk. They created their own legend and remained faithful to it until the very end…

A young German woman named Gerta Pohorylle and a young Hungarian man named Endre Friedmann meet in Paris in 1935. Both Communists, Jewish, exiled, and photographers, they decide to change their names in order to sell their work more easily, and so they become Gerda Taro and Robert Capa. With these new identities, they travel to Spain and begin to document the Spanish Civil War. Two years later, tragedy will befall them – but until then, theirs is a romance for the ages.

Based on the true story of these legendary figures and set to be the next film by award-winning director Michael Mann, WAITING FOR ROBERT CAPA is a moving tribute to all journalists and photographers who lose their lives to show us the world's daily transformations.

Reviews

‘Waiting for Robert Capa moves artfully between fact and fiction, with a stunningly evoked backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. Susana Fortes is the real thing: a world-class novelist who brings all of her considerable talents to bear on this brief, affecting story.” Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and The Passages of H.M.

‘sweeping, beautiful imagery and keen human emotion. Fortes is an award-winning Spanish novelist and she manages to convey a passionate joy in her country whilst writing convincingly from an outsider’s point of view. Waiting For Robert Capa is smoothly translated…There’s a good deal of action but it’s also a novel about the power of ideas, and, ultimately, a grand historical romance.’ Emerald Street blog

About the author

Susana Fortes has won many awards, including the 1994 Premio Nuevos Narradores, the Premio Primavera, the Premio de la Crítica, and, for WAITING FOR ROBERT CAPA, the Premio Fernando Lara 2009. Her novels have been translated into almost twenty languages. She currently teaches at a secondary school in Valencia and is a regular contributor to EL PAIS, as well as various cinema and literature magazines.