The Artificial Silk Girl
  • Published: 28 March 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241382974
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 208

The Artificial Silk Girl

Formats & editions
EBook
28 Mar 2019
Paperback
9 Sep 2025
Paperback
2 Apr 2019
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A hilarious, tragic novel about a would-be 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 all-night 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 glamour.
  • Published: 28 March 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241382974
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 208
Categories:

Also by Irmgard Keun

Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart
After Midnight
Gilgi, One of Us
Child of All Nations
See all

Praise for The Artificial Silk Girl

Just now I want to tell everyone about Irmgard Keun ... A great writer

Ali Smith

Keun has few rivals - I can think of none - as a chronicler of the ambience or the consequences of the rise of Nazism

Michael Hofmann

The Artificial Silk Girl follows Doris into the underbelly of a city that had once seemed all glamour and promise ... Kathie von Ankum's English translation will bring this masterwork to the foreground once more, giving a new generation the chance to discover Keun for themselves

Elle

Damned by the Nazis, hailed by the feminists ... a truly charming window into a young woman's life in the early 1930s

Los Angeles Times

A young girl navigates interwar German society and the expectations - or lack thereof - placed upon women, in this poignant, melancholy novel ... This heartbreaking story of dashed hopes is one that still has the power to affect and inspire

Publishers Weekly
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