Close-up - Softcover

Deighton, Len

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0586050043 ISBN 13: 9780586050040

Publisher: Triad Books, 1980

Synopsis

Deighton’s incendiary novel of the film industry back in print after 20 years. A Hollywood Babylon for our time.

Marshall Stone, international superstar and charismatic member of Hollywood's elite. Abundantly blessed with charm, genius and wealth, the one gift he most desires – everlasting youth – seems within his grasp when an eminent writer begins the star's biography. But painful memories and suppressed scandals threaten to expose the fiction of his life.

Dazzled by flattery and numbed by threats, the biographer is caught up in the big-daddy world where books are properties, films are investments, ratings are rigged, and stars and directors are bought and sold like slaves at an auction.

The rituals, the wheeler-dealing politics, and back-stabbing tactics of the richest industry in the world have never been more effectively portrayed. And at the heart of this glittering machine, a brilliant star who will do almost anything to remain untarnished.

This new reissue includes a foreword from the cover designer, Oscar-winning filmmaker Arnold Schwartzman, and a brand new introduction by Len Deighton, which offers a fascinating insight into the writing of the story.

About this title

Review:

‘Immense skill... a stylish and stimulating performance’ The Times

‘The richness, the sardonic humour, the wheeling and dealing world of the films with its parties, its highly coloured characters... The power of the book is undoubted’ The Standard

‘The film industrry is in many ways the ideal subject for Mr Deighton’s talents’ Times Literary Supplement

‘Deighton’s greatest novel, and I haven’t forgotten his epic Bomber. If Deighton never puts pen to paper again, his place is secure among the world’s top ten modern novelists.’ Whitefriar

About the Author:

Born in London, Len Deighton served in the RAF before graduating from the Royal College of Art. While in New York working as a magazine illustrator he began writing his first novel, The Ipcress File, which was published in 1962. He is now the author of more than thirty books of fiction and non-fiction. He divides his time between Jersey and California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Triad Books
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0586050043
• ISBN 13: 9780586050040
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352