Publisher's Synopsis
Greta Garbo was looked on as a unique phenomenon, a sphinx, a myth, the most beautiful woman in the world, but in reality she was a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, naïve, and always on her guard. When she arrived in Hollywood, aged 19, she spoke barely a word of English and was completely unprepared for the ferocious publicity that quickly adhered to her as, almost overnight, she became the world's most famous actress. The acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb offers a vivid and thorough retelling of Greta Garbo's life, beginning in the slums of Stockholm and proceeding through her years of struggling to elude the attention of the world - her desperate, futile striving to be 'left alone'.
