Love Goes to Press

Book excerpt: Written immediately after the war, Love Goes to Press opened in London in June 1946 and in New York in January 1947. Then a relief for the survivors of Blitzkrieg and ration cards, it is now a devilishly entertaining portrayal of the Battle of the Sexes. This romantic farce, published here for the first time, is set on the Italian front in World War II, where two women war correspondents—smart, sexy, and famous for scooping their male competitors—struggle to balance their professional lives with their love lives. The American literary tradition is rife with stories of “men without women,” but in Love Goes to Press Gellhorn and Cowles have created a world of “women without men.” The plot focuses on a pair of daring, quick-witted female buddies in bold pursuit of accomplishment and adventure while narrowly eluding the entanglements of marriage and domesticity. In her six-decade career as a war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn has covered the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and wars in Vietnam, the Middle East, and Central America. (In 1990, at the age of 81, she interrupted a snorkeling trip to Belize to witness the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Panama; her report appeared in Granta.) Gellhorn has published fifteen books, including eight novels, short fiction, and two collections of journalistic articles.