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"Blue Self-Portrait," by Noémi Lefebvre. Art history and unreliable narrators! On a flight from Berlin to Paris, the narrator's careening internal monologue probes ideas about fascism, art, capitalism and her relationship with a German composer. Cleverly provokes and rejects the idea of the male artist's pliant female muse while exploring artistic freedom and the art and politics that shaped 20th-century Europe.

Daley Farr, bookseller, Milkweed Books

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