The Salon of Exiled Artists in California: Salka Viertel Took in Actors, Prominent Intellectuals and Anonymous People in Exile Fleeing from Nazism

Salka Viertel was a Jewish actress who emigrated to Hollywood and was popularly known as the screenwriter of the Swedish actress Greta Garbo. Besides, she had a salon in Santa Monica, which was attended by a large part of the European intelligentsia in exile.

The book deals with topics such as Salka Viertel's alleged bisexuality and the number of friends she had, to name but a few: Albert Einstein, Charles Chaplin, Sergei Eisenstein, F. W. Murnau, Max Reinhardt, Arnold Schönberg, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Greta Garbo, Montgomery Clift... Also, like Gertrude Stein and other notorious women, she had her literary salon through which writers like Truman Capote, Christopher Isherwood, Gore Vidal and many other writers passed. Other themes she covers are the Berlin of the 1920s; the transition from silent to spoken film, as seen from the Mecca of Hollywood. Then, the rise of Hitler and what it meant for the Jewish condition; the exile of those intellectuals who could not return to their respective countries because of the Second World War. Later, the Cold War and the witch-hunt against communism. The background to the life of Salka Viertel and her circle of friends encompasses the great events of the 20th century.

Salka was a very modern and interesting woman for her time who should be recognized as such.

"Even though Salka Viertel was such a pivotal figure in the exile community, very little has been written about her, so Núria Añó's book is a corrective, and she fills in many of the gaps of The Kindness of Strangers."—Dialog International

"A very interesting story and I think even in these very current times since in my eyes we have not made much progress on the issue of acceptance of 'interpersonal feelings' in general. A great and extremely interesting book about Hollywood in the thirties and forties about the influence of artists from European countries such as Germany, Austria, France, Sweden, England, Ukraine and others. An extensive and high-quality research project resulting in an in-depth account of many well-known and famous personalities and their interpersonal relationships."—Joannes W. M. Groenewege, Translator

"I greatly enjoyed working on the translation of this biography about the life of an influential but little-studied actress and writer of the 20th century. Before starting this project, I had not heard of Salka Viertel, which is surprising considering her impact on Hollywood and on Greta Garbo, one of Sweden’s national prides. The book not only provides a detailed account of Salka’s life, but also addresses themes of sexuality, exile, survival, and art, spanning from the Weimar Republic in Germany to McCarthyism in the United States. Today, with the growing interest in bringing to light the often-overlooked lives of women and queer people who have shaped history and modern media, this book is both illustrative and enlightening."—Catherine Wray, Translator

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Núria Añó is a Spanish writer and a translator. Her works, including novels, short stories, essays and a biography, have been translated into fourteen languages. Her first published novel "Els nens de l'Elisa" (2006) was awarded third prize in the 24th Ramon Llull Novel Award. "L'escriptora morta" [The Dead Writer,2020] was published in 2008; "Núvols baixos" ([Lowering clouds, 2020], in 2009; "La mirada del fill", in 2012; "El salón de los artistas exiliados en California" [The Salon of Exiled Artists in California, 2020] is a biography on Jewish screenwriter Salka Viertel. Núria won the 18th Joan Fuster Prize for Fiction, fourth place for international writing at the 2018 Shanghai get-Together, and has been awarded with prestigious international grants: NVL (Finland, 2016), SWP (China, 2016), BCWT (Sweden, 2017), IWTCR (Greece, 2017), Krakow UNESCO City of Literature (Poland, 2018), IWTH (Latvia, 2019 and 2023) and IWP (China, 2020).