Delayed Rays of a Star

CHOSEN AS ONE OF 2019’S MOST ANTICIPATED TITLES FOR BY ELLE, THILLIST, USA TODAY, LITHUB, KIRKUS AND LA TIMES

‘Ambitious and dazzling … entertaining and thought-provoking too’ Daily Mail

‘Impressive’ The Times

‘Voraciously intelligent, heartrending … Amanda Lee Koe is a brilliant writer’ Garth Greenwell
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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. In 90 per cent of the films she appears in, 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.