“Venus, Vanishing is a gripping, intimate exploration of a young woman artist coming of age in pre-war Berlin. Rebecca Birrell recreates this lost world beautifully, building up its layers as carefully as a painter: its nightclub dancers and nosy landladies, its bold activists and ambitious politicians. Her protagonist Hannah finds in art a space to explore her desires, but in 1930s Germany, that seductive space is becoming increasingly dangerous. Art can both reveal and conceal secrets—and the tangled relationship between artist and muse can have lethal consequences. This is a richly textured, gorgeously written debut that I couldn’t put down.”
—Joanna Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Whalebone Theatre

“This extraordinary book holds a whole world, both deeply researched and deeply felt, brought to vivid life before our eyes. Rebecca Birrell writes her way into each scene so piercingly, steering readers through heart-quickening moments of peril and courage, of desire and risk. This is the rare sort of book that brings the past back to trembling life and alerts the reader to the shadows it casts in our present moment. Venus, Vanishing moved me deeply; I didn't want it to end.”
–Doireann Ní Ghríofa, author of A Ghost in the Throat

“It is rare for a novel to hold so much beauty and life alongside such destruction, loss and pain, and even rarer for none of these to diminish the force of the other. This book offers us a vision of art against evil, of the endurance of love, ambition and vitality amidst the worst of atrocities and betrayal. Rebecca Birrell’s writing offers us a world to live in and to hope from, a new counter-narrative of survival and renewal. This is a radiant, bold, exquisite novel—inspiring, moving and ultimately consoling.”
—Megan Hunter, author of Days of Light