Delayed Rays of a Star
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- $229.00
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- $229.00
Descripción editorial
CHOSEN AS ONE OF 2019'S MOST ANTICIPATED TITLES FOR BY ELLE, THILLIST, USA TODAY, LITHUB, KIRKUS AND LA TIMES
'Ambitious and dazzling ... entertaining and thought-provoking too' Daily Mail
'Impressive' The Times
'Voraciously intelligent, heartrending ... Amanda Lee Koe is a brilliant writer' Garth Greenwell
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When a photographer captures Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong and Leni Riefenstahl in one frame at a party in Berlin in 1928, no one realizes the extent to which their lives will reflect the tumultuous decades that follow.
Marlene crosses the Atlantic to find fame in Hollywood, the town that eats out of the palm of her hand till her wrinkles begin to show. After establishing her position as a filmmaker, Leni watches her fame turn to notoriety following the defeat of Nazi Germany. In 90 per cent of the films she appears in, the side characters played by Anna May must die so the white male lead can be returned to his white paramour on the screen. In the murky world these women navigate, their choices will be held up to the test of time. And the real question is, how much has anything changed?
This fierce and exquisite debut about womanhood, ambition, and art, played out against the shifting political tides of the twentieth century, introduces a mesmerizing new literary talent for our times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Koe's ambitious and well-researched debut novel (after the story collectionMinistry of Moral Panic) successfully melds historical fact with expansive and generous storytelling. Inspired by a 1928 photograph that captured Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahl posing for Alfred Eisenstaedt at a Berlin party, the overlapping narratives start with that moment and then spiral outwards, exploring the decades that follow in each woman's life. Dietrich, having retreated from the spotlight and become a recluse in her old age, hopes she's found one final admirer. The American-born Wong, whose prospects for leading lady roles were limited by antimiscegenation laws, later grapples with accusations that her career perpetuated Asian stereotypes. And Riefenstahl defends her political and artistic choices, notably Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, which she produced and directed. The book's most emotionally resonant sections often come from the stories of tangential characters an electrician in Riefenstahl's crew, for example, or the elderly Dietrich's young Chinese housekeeper, B b . Very occasionally, the inclusion of the famous characters' biographies reads like a Wikipedia entry; more often, however, the details of each woman's life and work are fully integrated into an exploration of her inner life. Throughout, their stories contend with the notion of authenticity in life and art of how performers define themselves in the public sphere and behind closed doors. Readers will find much to ponder in these vivid, fictionalized deep dives into three women who changed cinema.
