Image of Hedy Lamarr as a plot centre in Manuel Puig's novel "Pubis angelical"

The article considers the fifth novel by Argentinean postmodernist writer Manuel Puig, "Pubis Angelical" (1979). The author is widely known in the West. His novels touch upon pressing and acute social and political issues, occupy a special place in the world literary process of the 1970-1980s, in connection with which his works become the subject of not only traditional, but also structuralist, postcolonial, feminist and queer studies. However, in modern Russian literary criticism, the work of M. Puig is not sufficiently studied and is not as well known as the work of other Argentinean writers. The work of M. Puig is closely connected with cinema and is filled with numerous references to Hollywood cinema of the first half of the twentieth century. In other words, his novels are intertextual. The deep influence of cinema on the poetics of his works allows them to be studied in the framework of the intermedial approach. All this determines the novelty and relevance of the study. A special place in the novels of M. Puig is occupied by the stars of black and white cinema - Hollywood starlets. The author turns to the image of film star for a more complete disclosure of the images of the heroes of the work, their inner world and motivations. Often, the images of film stars act as a means of plot movement. In the novel "Pubis Angelical", the image of Hedy Lamarr, an American actress of Austrian origin, who gained real fame in the 1930s and 1940s, becomes such a central figure and conquered Hollywood. The article discusses the role of the image of Hedi Lamarr in three interwoven narrative lines of the novel, the heroines of which are somehow connected with the famous actress. It is concluded that the image of H. Lamarr is not only the link between the heroines of the work, but also the center of the work around which the plot unfolds.