Image for The artificial silk girl

The artificial silk girl

See all formats and editions

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.

The Artificial Silk Girl was a huge bestseller in Weimar Germany before the Nazis banned it, and is today Keun's best-loved 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.

Read More
Available
£13.50
Add Line Customisation
Available on VLeBooks
Add to List
Product Details
Penguin Classics
0241382971 / 9780241382974
eBook (EPUB)
833.912
28/03/2019
England
English
General
208 pages
Copy: 10%; print: 10%
Translated from the German Description based on CIP data; resource not viewed.