A New York Times and New York­er Best Book of the Year. Short­list­ed for the Vine Award for Cana­di­an Jew­ish Lit­er­a­ture.

Kiki Man Ray charts the volatile rela­tion­ship between the French cabaret star, mod­el, painter, and mem­oirist Kiki de Mont­par­nasse and the Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er Man Ray (born Emmanuel ​“Man­ny” Rad­nitzky, the son of Russ­ian-Jew­ish immi­grants, and raised in Brook­lyn). 

Kiki and Man Ray met at a Parisian café in 1921. What fol­lowed was an explo­sive decade-long con­nec­tion, both pro­fes­sion­al and roman­tic, dur­ing which the cou­ple grew and exper­i­ment­ed as artists, com­pet­ed for fame, and cre­at­ed many of the shock­ing images that cement­ed Man Ray’s rep­u­ta­tion as one of the great artists of the mod­ern era. The works they made togeth­er now set records at auc­tion.

Award-win­ning his­to­ri­an Mark Braude illu­mi­nates Kiki’s sem­i­nal influ­ence on Man Ray’s art, and on the cul­ture of 1920s Paris and beyond. Kiki Man Ray is the sto­ry of two excep­tion­al lives that will chal­lenge ideas about artists and mus­es — and the lines sep­a­rat­ing the two.