Jan Jekal, born in Kiel in 1993, is a freelance writer and cultural journalist. He studied North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. His articles on film and music have appeared in publications such as Die Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung. He also hosts the pop culture podcast Rolling Stone Weekly. Paranoia in Hollywood, his first book, was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the Best Nonfiction category. Jekal lives in Berlin.

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Lea Wohl von Haselberg

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Book

Paranoia in Hollywood

Paranoia in Hollywood unfolds in 1940s Los Angeles, tracing how artists who fled Europe find themselves once again subjected to political repression in their Californian exile. Amid the hysteria of the Cold War, figures such as Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann are denounced as communists.