Delayed Rays of a Star

Delayed Rays of a StarAn NPR Best Book of the Year A CrimeReads Historical Fiction Best Book of the Year At a chance encounter at a Berlin soir e in 1928, the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captures three very different women together in one frame: up and coming German actress Marlene Dietrich; Anna May Wong, the world's first Chinese American star; and Leni Riefenstahl, whose work as a director of propaganda art films would first make her famous then, infamous. The

An NPR Best Book of the Year
A CrimeReads Historical Fiction Best Book of the Year

At a chance encounter at a Berlin soir e in 1928, the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captures three very different women together in one frame: up-and-coming German actress Marlene Dietrich; Anna May Wong, the world's first Chinese American star; and Leni Riefenstahl, whose work as a director of propaganda art films would first make her famous--then, infamous.

The trajectories of these women's lives wind from Weimar Berlin to LA's Chinatown, from the Bavarian Alps to the Champs- lys es, and the different settings they inhabit are as richly textured as the roles they play: siren, victim, predator, or lover, each one a carefully calibrated performance. In the orbit of each star live secondary players whose voices and viewpoints reveal the legacy each woman left behind. Intimate and clear-eyed, this is a visceral depiction of womanhood--its particular hungers, its oblique calculations, and its eventual betrayals.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Anchor Books
Published: 06/09/2020
ISBN: 9780525564546
Pages: 400
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 7.80h x 5.30w x 1.30d