{"product_id":"the-artificial-silk-girl-9781892746818","title":"The Artificial Silk Girl","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1931  a young woman writer  living in Germany  penned her answer to Anita Looss Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the era of cinematic glamour. The resulting novel  The Artificial Silk Girl  became an acclaimed bestseller and a masterwork of German literature  in the same tradition as Christopher Isherwoods Berlin Stories and Bertoldt Brechts Three Penny Opera. Like Isherwood and Brecht  Keun revealed the dark underside of Berlins \"golden twenties\" with both empathy and honesty. Unfortunately  a Nazi censorship board banned Keuns work in 1933 and destroyed all existing copies of   The Artificial Silk Girl. Only one English translation was published in Great Britain  before the book disappeared in the chaos of the ensuing war. Today  more than seven decades later  a new translation is about to bring this lost classic to light once more.  At the beginning of The Artificial Silk Girl  Doris vows to write down all that happens to hernot as a mere diarist  but as the glamorous star of her own life-story. \"I want to write like a movie \" she declares. But  instead of scripting what she hopes will be a quick rise to fame and fortune as either an actress  or as the mistress\/wife of a wealthy man  Doris describes a slow descent into near prostitution and homelessness. She becomes the cinematic lens through which we see pre-war Berlin. It is not the dazzling and exciting city of promise it seems to be on the surface; Doris unwittingly shows us a bleak  seamy urban landscape. In the words of another character in the novel  \"the city is sick.\" It is \"sick\" with intolerance  cruelty  and apathy … On every corner  there are beggars and whores and men selling perfume and posters of naked women. Doris hungers for a real home  real silk blouses  real love … But  there is no Hollywood happy ending awaiting her  as there is for Looss Loralei Lee.  Doris begins her career as an independent woman on the stage  in a play by Schiller. Soon she wangles her way into getting one line to recite. But  then Doris steals a fur coat from the theatres cloakroom … She flees from the police and from her home city of Cologne  and travels to Berlin to stay with a friend. In Berlin  she is unable to get a job. Nevertheless  as long as she has the fur  the ultimate symbol of luxury and seductive glamour  she feels invincible. And she is unwilling to return it. When her living situation with the friend and the friends husband proves difficult  Doris leaves  but has no one to whom she can turn. Will she be able to survive on her own on the streets of Berlin? Will she  at last  be able to give up on the Hollywood dream?  Keun is an important literary voiceat last rediscovered and restored to the same heights as such literary luminaries as Isherwood and Brecht. The Artificial Silk Girl belongs on the bookshelf of students of German literature  womens literature  and master works of classic fiction  in general.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45652935606325,"sku":"ByrdShop_1892746816","price":38.86,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781892746818.jpg?v=1781853542","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-artificial-silk-girl-9781892746818","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}