Marilyn

"Let's think of Marilyn, who embodied every man's love affair with America; Marilyn Monroe, who was blonde and beautiful, and had a sweet voice and all the pristine beauty of American gardens. She was our angel, the sweet angel of sex, and the sweetness of sex flowed from her like the resonant resonance of the finest veins of a violin. On all five continents, men most versed in love desired her, and for her, too, throbbed the typical pustules of the adolescent who has just landed his first job at a gas station, for Marilyn was liberation, a veritable Stradivarius of sex, so dazzling, indulgent, comical, accommodating, and tender that even the most mediocre musician compensated for his lack of artistry with the evanescent magic of her violin." Thus begins —and continues, without losing momentum— this unforgettable portrait of one of the great icons of the 20th century, an extraordinary actress who shone brightly in some of the milestones of American cinema, such as Some Like It Hot, The Seven Year Itch, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and The Misfits, before fading away at just 36 years old. What was initially intended as a prologue for a large-format book of photographs of Marilyn Monroe, commissioned to Norman Mailer —who was already a legend of American literature— became, through the indomitable and passionate lens of the master of New Journalism, one of the most intense and unbridled biographies ever written. This was one of Mailer's best-selling books —not without controversy, as it suggests that the actress's death may have been an assassination orchestrated from the highest echelons of power— and we now present it in a new translation to celebrate the centenary of the actress's birth.