No other twentieth-century film artist so captivated the world, or spent so much energy trying to hide from it. This is the story of Greta Garbo, from her troubled childhood in a working-class suburb of Stockholm, to Hollywood where she reigned as the divine star, to her unintentional retirement at thirty-six, self-exiled for the last half-century of her life.

We see Garbo against the backgrounds of Europe, Hollywood, and New York. We see her serious, playful, passionate, funny, curious, and within her circle of intimates. Paris’ biography supplants the legend of Garbo the enigma with a revelation of the real woman, whose grip on our imagination remains as powerful today as it was ninety years ago when she dazzled the world in Flesh and the Devil.