Delayed Rays of a Star

- Blurb -

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 overnight fame in Hollywood, the town that eats out of the palm of her hand till her wrinkles begin to show. Leni cements her position as a visionary filmmaker in a male-dominated industry, only to have her fame become notoriety after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Nine and a half times out of ten films, the exotic side characters played by Anna must die, so that the ubiquitous white male lead can be returned to his white female paramour on the screen.In the glitzy and 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?As the story shifts nimbly between cinematic legends and gorgeous locations, secondary players begin to make riveting cameos - we also encounter a fatalistic Jewish philosopher, a Chinese housemaid trying to put her past behind her, an obsessive Hollywood auteur, a German soldier assisting a propaganda film shoot in the mountains. Whom does history remember, and what of those forgotten?Clear-eyed, playful and fierce, this exquisite debut about ambition, art and the political tides of the twentieth century introduces a mesmerizing new literary talent for our times.