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Table of Contents
About The Book
From “one of the brightest, most pleasure-giving writers at work today” (Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize–winning author), a visionary tale inspired by the life of film director G.W. Pabst, who fled to Hollywood to resist the Nazis only to be forced to return to his homeland and create propaganda films for the German Reich.
An artist’s life, a pact with the devil, and the dangerous illusions of the silver screen.
G.W. Pabst, one of cinema’s greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and unrecognizable Germany, he fled to Hollywood. But now, under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, the Hollywood actress whom he made famous, can help him.
When he receives word that his elderly mother is ill, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark. Pabst, his wife, and his young son are suddenly confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime. So, when Joseph Goebbels—the minister of propaganda in Berlin—sees the potential for using the European film icon for his directorial genius and makes big promises to Pabst and his family, Pabst must consider Goebbels’s thinly veiled order. While Pabst still believes that he will be able to resist these advances, that he will not submit to any dictatorship other than art, he has already taken the first steps into a hopeless entanglement.
Kehlmann’s latest oeuvre explores the complicated relationships and distinctions between art and power, beauty and barbarism, cog and conspirator.
An artist’s life, a pact with the devil, and the dangerous illusions of the silver screen.
G.W. Pabst, one of cinema’s greatest directors of the 20th century, was filming in France when the Nazis seized power. To escape the horrors of the new and unrecognizable Germany, he fled to Hollywood. But now, under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, the Hollywood actress whom he made famous, can help him.
When he receives word that his elderly mother is ill, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark. Pabst, his wife, and his young son are suddenly confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime. So, when Joseph Goebbels—the minister of propaganda in Berlin—sees the potential for using the European film icon for his directorial genius and makes big promises to Pabst and his family, Pabst must consider Goebbels’s thinly veiled order. While Pabst still believes that he will be able to resist these advances, that he will not submit to any dictatorship other than art, he has already taken the first steps into a hopeless entanglement.
Kehlmann’s latest oeuvre explores the complicated relationships and distinctions between art and power, beauty and barbarism, cog and conspirator.
Appearances
MAY 8
0:00:00
in person
Oakley Colloquium
In Person
An evening with Daniel Kehlmann, author of THE DIRECTOR, an event which promises to be an exciting conversation between German best-selling author and two germanophile Williams College professors, Dukes Love and Christophe Kone .
90 Denison Park Drive
Williams College
Williamstown, MA 01267
About The Author
Photograph © Heike Steinweg
Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975. His novels and plays have won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Welt Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. His novel Tyll was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize, and Measuring the World has been translated into more than forty languages and is one of the biggest successes in post-war German literature. He currently lives in Berlin and New York.
Product Details
- Publisher: S&S/Summit Books (May 6, 2025)
- Length: 352 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668087794
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Raves and Reviews
“[Kehlmann] constructs a dark account of one man’s descent into fascist complicity, a path strewn with surrealistic scenarios and chilling self-justifications in favor of art…Kehlmann’s novel is purposefully unnerving and timely.”
– Sarah Johnson, Booklist (starred review)
"Clear-eyed and propulsive...a searing look at the mechanics of complicity."
– Publishes Weekly (starred review)
“An incomparably accomplished and inventive piece of fiction by one of the most intelligent novelists at work today.”
– Jeffrey Eugenides, author of Middlesex
“Daniel Kehlmann, the finest German writer of his generation, takes on the life of the eminent film director G.W. Pabst to weave a tragicomic historical fantasia that stretches from Hollywood to Nazi Germany, from Garbo to Goebbels, to show how even a great artist can make, and be unmade by, moral compromises with evil. A dazzling performance and a real page turner."
– Salman Rushdie, author of Knife
“The Director is engrossing and luminous, an epic act of historical imagination and an intimate parable about moral compromise and the seductions of art. After Tyll, I wasn’t sure how Kehlmann could possibly top himself. He has. This book is a marvel.”
– Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies
“A wonderful book about complicity and the complicity of art. It’s also funny, and brilliant.”
– Zadie Smith, author of The Fraud, via the Ezra Klein Show
“Daniel Kehlmann is shockingly brilliant, a writer of extraordinary range and grace. At times absurdist, at times horrifyingly realist, The Director asks where the moral duty of the artist resides, and how the narcissism of the artistic project can bleed into complicity.”
– Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds
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High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): The Director Hardcover 9781668087794
- Author Photo (jpg): Daniel Kehlmann Photograph © Heike Steinweg(0.1 MB)
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