Engelska

<b>Born to an American myth and raised in the wilds of Graceland, Lisa Marie Presley was never truly understood...until now. Before her death in 2023, she'd been working on a raw, riveting, one-of-a-kind memoir for years, recording countless hours of breathtakingly vulnerable tape, which has finally been put on the page by her daughter, Riley Keough.</b>

<p><b>In this riveting and immersive biography, acclaimed author Mary Gabriel details the meteoric rise and enduring influence of </b><b>perhaps the greatest pop icon of the modern era: Madonna.</b><br/><br/>With her arrival on the pop music scene in the early 1980s, Madonna generated nothing short of an explosion - as great as that of Elvis or the Beatles or Michael Jackson - <b>taking the world by storm with her liberated politics and breath-taking talent.</b> Within two years of her 1983 debut album, a shopping mall in California was nicknamed "The Madonna Mall" because it was overrun with "Material Girls". Later that year, the flagship Macy's store in Manhattan held a Madonna lookalike contest with Andy Warhol as judge, and opened a department called "Madonna-land".<br/><br/>Everywhere, women and men gravitated to the singer and actor as an emblem of a new age, one in which the <b>women's liberation</b> could shed the buttoned-down demeanour and reserved seriousness of the '60s and '70s and continue to make tremendous strides for a new generation. Topping charts again and again with provocative, visionary music and videos, <b>Madonna brought queer and sexually-curious identities into the mainstream</b>, fiercely defending a person's right to love whomever, and the space to be who they wanted.<br/><br/>Now, after almost <b>45 years in the spotlight, and in her 65th year</b>, no stranger to controversy, Madonna stands as one of the staunchest supporters of women's and LGBTQ+ rights and continues to represent a lionized emblem of liberation throughout the world.<br/><br/>Deftly tracing the artist's life and influence from her Michigan roots through to her sold out concerts around the globe, master biographer Mary Gabriel captures the <b>inspiration, fame, and activism</b> of one of the greatest music icons of our time.</p>

<p> <strong>The hotly anticipated book from 'one of the all-time pop-culture greats' (<em>New York</em> magazine) that chronicles her shocking life and unyielding determination to not only survive but achieve her dreams.</strong> </p> <p><strong>'Intense and compelling'</strong> SUNDAY TIMES</p> <p><strong>'A gripping and powerful coming-of-age story'</strong> TELEGRAPH</p> <p><strong>'A masterpiece'</strong> GREG JAMES, BBC RADIO 1</p> <p>Julia Fox is famous for many things: her captivating acting, such as her breakout role in the film <em>Uncut Gems</em>; her trendsetting style, including bleached eyebrows, exaggerated eyeshadow and cutout dresses; her mastery of social media. But all these share the trait for which she is <em>most</em> famous: unabashedly and unapologetically being herself.</p> <p>This commitment to authenticity has never been more on display than in <em>Down the Drain</em>. Fox recounts her turbulent path to cultural supremacy: her parents' volatile relationship that divided her childhood between Italy and New York City and left her largely raising herself; a possessive and abusive drug-dealing boyfriend whose torment continued even from within Rikers Island; her own trips to jail as well as to a psychiatric hospital; her work as a dominatrix that led to a complicated entanglement with a sugar daddy; a heroin habit that led to New Orleans trap houses and that she would kick only after the fatal overdose of her best friend; her own near-lethal overdoses and the deaths of still more friends from drugs and suicide; an emotionally explosive, tabloid-dominating romance with a figure she dubs "The Artist"; a whirlwind, short-lived marriage and her trials as a single parent striving to support her young son.</p> <p>Yet as extraordinary as her story is, its universality is what makes it so powerful. Fox doesn't just capture her evolution from grade-school outcast to fashion-world icon, she captures her transition from girlhood to womanhood to motherhood. Family and friendship, sex and death, violence and love, money and power, innocence and experience-it's all here, in raw, remarkable and riveting detail.</p> <p>More than a year before the book's publication, Fox's description of it as "a masterpiece" in a red carpet interview went viral. As always, she was just being honest. <em>Down the Drain</em> is a true literary achievement, as one-of-a-kind as its author.</p>