About this Event
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Includes a behind-the-scenes conversation with bestselling novelist Amor Towles • The epic story of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive in 1940s Hollywood and fascist Europe, a timeless tale of love, deceit, and sacrifice—and a perfect book club pick—from the award-winning author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to Los Angeles after a childhood transgression leads to her father’s arrest.
Fifteen years later, on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won’t speak to her. Her boss, a man of many toupees, has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can’t escape the studio’s narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria’s only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.
Over the coming months, as the bright lights go dark across Los Angeles, Mercury Pictures becomes a nexus of European émigrés: modernist poets trying their luck as B-movie screenwriters, once-celebrated architects becoming scale-model miniaturists, and refugee actors finding work playing the very villains they fled. While the world descends into war, Maria rises through a maze of conflicting politics, divided loyalties, and jockeying ambitions. But when the arrival of a stranger from her father’s past threatens Maria’s carefully constructed facade, she must finally confront her father’s fate—and her own.
Purchase the book here or the audiobook here.
SPECIAL OFFER: We are providing a free audiobook of one of Marra's previous books, The Tsar of Love and Techno, with a book+ticket purchase. Courtesy of Libro.fm.
What your ticket includes:
- $8 off any drink at the bar
- free audiobook credit from Libro.fm for (with purchase of Mercury Pictures Presents)
Grab a cocktail at the bar and tell us what you thought of the book! Our informal discussion will be led by Liv Stratman, author of .
Registration is capped, so please register early if you are planning on attending. Please note: gratuity for the bartenders is not included. Please use your tickets at the beginning of the event.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Book Club Bar, 197 East 3rd Street, New York, United States
USD 10.00
