Was the operation a great adventure, one of the century’s most memorable feats of valor? An act of desperation, even madness? An elaborate suicide?

In OUT OF THE SKY, Matti Friedman follows an unlikely team of parachutists dropped into Nazi Europe in 1944 and unravels one of the strangest episodes of World War II: an operation serving two masters hostile to each other, a group of young women and men who escape the Holocaust in Europe and make the inconceivable choice to return, a secret mission whose goal has never been explained, and a failure that somehow became a legend.

With a cast of heroes including 23-year-old Hannah Senesh, a playwright’s daughter and author of one of the most famous poems in modern Hebrew, the fiery Roman-born socialist Enzo Sereni, and the streetwise and lovelorn fighter Haviva Reik, OUT OF THE SKY reopens a forgotten chapter in the history of the world war and the creation of the State of Israel. From thousands of archival documents, secret telegrams, and unpublished testimonies, Friedman’s stirring and unpredictable story goes beyond a true tale of spies and commandos to investigate the reliability of narrative, the usefulness of myth, and the power of literature to turn defeat into victory.

Rights Sold: 

US: Spiegel & Grau; Canada: Signal Books\McClelland & Stewart; Israel: Kinneret

Reviews:

“Thrilling, terrifying and awe-inspiring, this is one of the great untold special forces stories of WWII: the joint SOE-Haganah mission into Yugoslavia, the joint SOE-Haganah mission into Yugoslavia, featuring a heroic cast of courageous fighters and poets, male and female, including a famous poetess and diabolic Nazis, a story filled with espionage, daring, and peril, beautifully told by one of our finest storytellers, Matti Friedman. Compelling and compulsive reading.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, international bestselling author of THE WORLD: A FAMILY HISTORY OF HUMANITY and STALIN: COURT OF THE RED TSAR

“I’ll read anything Matti Friedman writes, knowing his work will not only engage and enlighten, but transform me. OUT OF THE SKY is the story of a woman who became a legend—and of the eternal interplay between human lives and history, how our stories, taken together, become the record of who we are.” —Jonathan Safran Foer, author of EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED and WE ARE THE WEATHER

“Matti Friedman achieves the rare feat of transforming archival discovery into gripping literature. OUT OF THE SKY is at once an eloquent inquiry into heroism, a wrenching chronicle of bravery and betrayal, and a poignant evocation of a generation hurled from innocence into the maw of history.” —Benjamin Balint, author of KAFKA’S LAST TRIAL

"An absolutely captivating story where the reality that Friedman has uncovered is far more fascinating than the myth. This is a book, in every sense, about the distance between heaven and earth, and the courage it takes to cross it.” —Dara Horn, author of PEOPLE LOVE DEAD JEWS

"In this hauntingly beautiful book, Matti Friedman sets out to recover the story of Hannah Senesh and her fallen companions from the shadowland of myth and fading memory. Friedman movingly gathers up the sparks of his Jewish heroes’ brief lives, their biblical dreams, European nightmares, and above all the hope, imagination, and youthful daring that could not save Europe’s Jews but continue to inspire the old-new country whose rebirth is Friedman’s true subject.” —Jonathan Rosen, author of THE BEST MINDS