Susie Mesure

Dark days in Hollywood: Mercury Pictures Presents, by Anthony Marra, reviewed

Marra’s blockbuster novel centres around a struggling Hollywood film studio caught between in-fighting and government censorship in 1941

Anthony Marra. [Getty Images]
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  • Mercury Pictures Presents

    Anthony Marra

    John Murray, pp. 408, £14

Summer is a time for blockbusters and Anthony Marra has delivered the goods with Mercury Pictures Presents, a sweeping book about 1940s Hollywood, Mussolini’s Italy and America’s entry into the second world war.

The action opens in the executive offices of Mercury Pictures International, a struggling film studio run by Artie and Ned Feldman, two brothers modelled on Jack and Harry Warner.

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