The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite - Softcover

As moving as it is smart, this tough-minded extravaganza had me from page one . . . a dazzling tale of survival in the urban wilderness - Emma Donoghue, author of the bestselling SLAMMERKIN Written with intelligence and shimmer, [The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite] transports the reader to Berlin in the first part of the twentieth century. Colin s heroine, Lilly Aphrodite, is as rich, alive, and dangerous as the city she inhabits; and as the novel progresses, Berlin s history becomes her own. - David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife There are few characters as beguiling as the incomparable Tiny Lil. And Colin tells her riveting story and the enthralling story of pre-war Berlin breathlessly and triumphantly. - Jennifer Gilmore, author of Golden Country

As the clock chimed the turn of the twentieth century, Lilly Nelly Aphrodite took her first breath. Born to a cabaret dancer and soon orphaned in a scandalous murder-suicide, Lilly finds refuge at a Catholic orphanage, coming under the wing of Sister August, the first in a string of lost loves. There she meets Hanne Schmidt, a teen prostitute, and forms a bond that will last them through tumultuous love affairs, disastrous marriages, and destitution during the First World War and the subsequent economic collapse. As the century progresses, Lilly and Hanne move from the tawdry glamour of the tingle-tangle nightclubs to the shadow world of health films before Lilly finds success and stardom in the new medium of motion pictures and ultimately falls in love with a man whose fate could cost her everything she has worked for. Gripping and darkly seductive, The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite showcases all the glitter and splendor of the brief heyday of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of Hollywood to its golden age. As it foreshadows the horrors of the Second World War, the novel asks what price is paid when identity becomes unfixed and the social order is upended.