A hilarious tragic novel about a wouldbe movie star in 1920s Berlin from the author of Child of All Nations Doris is going to be a big star Wearing a stolen fur coat and recently fired from her office job she takes an allnight train to Berlin to make it in the movies But what she encounters in the city is not fame and fortune but gnawing hunger seedy bars and exploitative men and as Doris sinks ever lower she resorts to desperate measures to survive Very funny and intensely moving this is a dazzling portrait of roaring Berlin in the 1920s and a poignant exploration of the doomed pursuit of fame and glamourThe Artificial Silk Girl was a huge bestseller in Weimar Germany before the Nazis banned it and is today Keuns bestloved book in Germany Funny fresh and radical in its dissection of the limited options available to working women it is a novel that speaks to our times
