Immerse yourself in joy and glamour: this is the dazzling Josephine Baker in her own words.
'She was a beacon of joy and fellowship and her smile...reaches out to us across the years'
Financial Times 'A delightful nourishing read' Guardian 'Josephine Baker certainly shook
things up. This memoir demonstrates - vividly - the pleasure she took in doing it' Washington
Post Funny candid and unconventional: the wildly famous but elusive Josephine Baker tells
her own story in this enchanting memoir. Baker took Paris by storm in the 1920s dazzling
audiences with her humour beauty and effervescence on stage. She became an icon. Hemingway
Cocteau and Picasso admired her Shirley Bassey adored her. It was said she strolled the
streets of Paris with her pet cheetah who wore a diamond collar. Later as one of the most
recognisable women in the world she became a spy for the French resistance her celebrity
working as her cover. She was awarded the Légion d'honneur for military service. After the war
she became increasingly interested in civil rights and in 1963 she spoke at the March on
Washington alongside Martin Luther King. All this from a girl of mixed heritage born in
Missouri to a poor mother and a father she did not know. Formed from a series of conversations
with the French journalist Marcel Sauvage over a period of more than twenty years and now
translated into English for the first time this gorgeous book offers an insight into one of
the most beguiling figures of the twentieth century. 'The most sensational woman anyone ever
saw' Ernest Hemingway WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY IJEOMA OLUO TRANSLATED BY ANAM ZAFAR AND SOPHIE
LEWIS
