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. Nine and a half times out of ten films, 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.
Photographed together at a party in Weimar Berlin, Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong and Leni Riefenstahl are ambitious women on the cusp of stardom. Cross-dressing bisexual Dietrich, shunned by Germany for her anti-Nazi views finds it in Hollywood, the city which adores her till her wrinkles begin to show. Riefenstahl finds it a few years later in Germany where she becomes her admired fuhrer's favourite filmmaker, spending the rest of her long years trying to make people forget. Anna May Wong discovers that regardless of a generation's sacrifice in defeating the swastika, as a Chinese-American actress, her character will die nine and a half times out of ten films because a white male lead has to end up with a white female lead. But the real question is, how much has anything changed?
An exquisite debut about womanhood, the movie industry, and every shade of fascism, Delayed Rays of a Star introduces a mesmerising new talent for our times.
Delayed Rays of a Star is a big globe-trotting, time-traveling wonder of a novel that made me laugh and in a hundred other ways appreciate the playful brilliance of Amanda Lee Koe. This is writing to be devoured and shared, and a writer's arrival to be celebrated
