The Director - Daniel Kehlmann

From one of today's most acclaimed and captivating novelists, hailed by Jeffrey Eugenides as "one of the brightest, most pleasure-giving writers at work today," comes a sweeping historical novel inspired by the extraordinary life of legendary filmmaker G.W. Pabst.

A story of artistic ambition, moral compromise, and the seductive power of cinema.

Celebrated as one of the greatest film directors of the twentieth century, G.W. Pabst was working in France when the Nazis rose to power. Determined to escape the darkness engulfing Germany, he fled to Hollywood. Yet beneath California's dazzling sunshine, the renowned director discovers that fame abroad offers little protection; in the American film industry, he struggles to find his place, and not even Greta Garbo—whose career he helped launch—can restore his fortunes.

When news arrives that his ageing mother is gravely ill, Pabst returns to Austria, now absorbed into Nazi Germany as Ostmark. There, he, his wife, and their young son come face to face with the brutality of the regime. Recognising Pabst's prestige and talent, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich's propaganda minister, seeks to recruit him, offering promises and opportunities that conceal a far more sinister demand.

Convinced he can remain loyal only to his art and resist political influence, Pabst gradually finds himself trapped in a web of compromise from which there may be no escape.

In this powerful and thought-provoking novel, Daniel Kehlmann explores the uneasy boundaries between art and power, beauty and barbarism, complicity and resistance.