Fearless and Free

A Memoir

By: Josephine Baker, Anam Zafar - translator, Sophie Lewis - translator

Narrated by: Quentin Bruno, Jade Wheeler, Ijeoma Oluo

Brought to you by Penguin.

This is the iconic Josephine Baker in her own words.

Funny, candid and unconventional: the wildly famous but elusive Josephine Baker tells her own story in this enchanting memoir. Baker took Paris by storm in the 1920s, dazzling audiences with her humour, beauty and effervescence on stage. She became an icon. Hemingway, Jean Cocteau and Picasso admired her; Shirley Bassey adored her. It was told she strolled the streets of Paris with her pet cheetah who wore a diamond collar.

Later, as one of the most recognisable women in the world, she became a spy for the French resistance, her celebrity working as her cover. She was awarded the Légion d'Honneur for military service. After the war she became increasingly interested in civil rights. In 1963 she spoke at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King. All this from a girl born in Missouri to a poor single black woman and a white father she did not know.

Formed from a series of conversations with the French journalist Marcel Sauvage, over a period of more than twenty years, and now translated into English for the first time, this gorgeous book offers an insight into one of the most beguiling figures of the twentieth century.

‘The most sensational woman anyone ever saw’ Ernest Hemingway

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY IJEOMA OLUO

TRANSLATED BY ANAM ZAFAR AND SOPHIE LEWIS

© Josephine Baker 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Critic reviews

Translated gorgeously into English… [Baker’s] storytelling is writerly and precise, with satisfying arcs in a single sentence or a page… a delightful, nourishing read

[Baker] skips across her life, never dwelling on hardship, with an imaginative joie de vivre that offers a real glimpse of her presence…. She was a beacon of joy and fellowship and her smile…reaches out to us across the years

As with Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, its joy lies in its distinctive voice… it feels like the closest you are going to come with an audio with the woman… Baker was no saint, but this book leaves you with no doubt about her unique power

Josephine Baker certainly shook things up. This memoir demonstrates - vividly - the pleasure she took in doing it

A vivid impression of her ebullient personality, extravagant love for animals, and overflowing generosity

This gorgeous, captivating gem of a memoir will both introduce Baker to a new generation of readers, and cement her legacy as an enduring international icon (Abbott Kahler)

[Fearless and Free] is lively and humorous, at once candid and reticent… [it] paint[s] an engaging picture of the early world of light entertainment and of the movements against racism that swept the world in the 1950s and 1960s