Love in a Time of Hate

Starred review from October 16, 2023
“What people in the ’20s desperately needed was love,” according to this kaleidoscopic English-language debut from historian Illies. Following celebrated artists of the decade as they tumble from one bed to another, Illies tracks Pablo Picasso as he flits from his former muse and lover to his former mistress, to his wife, and then repeats the cycle. Elsewhere, Marlene Dietrich sneaks quietly from her husband’s bed to roam the lesbian bars of Berlin, engaging in several affairs; Jean-Paul Sartre gets stood up at an outdoor Parisian café by Simone de Beauvoir, who will eventually become the great passion of his life; and two generations of Thomas Mann’s family write, wed, and wander in and out of love. In a narrative that meanders through the bars and the cafés of Montparnasse in Paris, studio backlots in Hollywood, the French Riviera, the streets of Berlin, and Broadway stage productions in New York, Illies demonstrates how these famous figures of the Lost Generation obsessed over and fixated on one another as the first rumbling of war haunted their imaginations. As the ’20s gave way to the ’30s, Illies shows how their thoughts turn from obsessive love to obsessive fear and agonized decisions over whether to flee or fight. Ethereal and intimate, this is an enchanting meditation on love and war.