Art, Exile and Power Shape a Director’s Survival
Cinema and exile become a way to examine what art costs under pressure. Daniel Kehlmann balances wit with horror, making this suited to readers who like literary fiction with historical force, moral unease and narrative elegance. The pressure gives the story real bite.
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The Director
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Art, Exile and Power Shape a Director’s Survival
Cinema and exile become a way to examine what art costs under pressure. Daniel Kehlmann balances wit with horror, making this suited to readers who like literary fiction with historical force, moral unease and narrative elegance. The pressure gives the story real bite.
- Book Synopsis
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2026
New Statesman Fiction Book of the Year 2025 A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2025 A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 A Telegraph Book of the Year 2025 A Guardian Translated Book of the Year 2025 An Observer Book of the Year 2025
'Supple, horrifying and mordantly droll' New York Times
'Nothing short of brilliant' Wall Street Journal
'A subtle, often darkly funny novel about the relationship between art and power' Sunday Times
'A dazzling performance and a real page turner' Salman Rushdie
From 'one of the brightest, most pleasure-giving writers at work today' (Jeffrey Eugenides), a visionary tale inspired by the life of the 20th century film director G.W. Pabst, who left Europe for Hollywood to resist the Nazis and then returned to his homeland with his wife and young son and began making films for the German Reich.
An artist's life, a pact with the devil, a novel about the dangerous illusions of the silver screen.
G. W. Pabst, one of cinema's greatest, perhaps the greatest director of his era: when the Nazis seized power he was filming in France, to escape the horrors of the new Germany he flees to Hollywood. But under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, who he made famous, can help him. And thus, almost through no fault of his own, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark.
The returning family is confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime. But Goebbels, the minister of propaganda in Berlin, wants the film genius, he won't take no for an answer and makes big promises. 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.
Daniel Kehlmann's novel about art and power, beauty and barbarism is a triumph. The Director shows what literature is capable of.
Ideal for readers who:
- Read sophisticated literary fiction exploring artistic compromise, moral duty and power under a dictatorship.
- Want to follow a brilliant film director caught between Hollywood exile and relentless Nazi pressure.
- Are fascinated by twentieth-century cinema history, propaganda politics and the wartime landscapes of Austria and Germany.
- Admire darkly funny, morally complex historical novels delivered with real intellectual depth.
- About The Author
- Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and lives in Vienna, Berlin and New York. He has published six novels: Measuring the World, Me & Kaminski, Fame, F, You Should Have Left and Tyll and has won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Doderer Prize, The Kleist Prize, the WELT Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. Measuring the World was translated into more than forty languages and is one of the biggest successes in post-war German literature.
- Product Details
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- ISBN
- 9781529435153
- Format
- Paperback
- Publisher
- riverrun, (23 April 2026)
- Number of Pages
- 333
- Weight
- 285 grams
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 196 x 128 x 26 mm
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