The Director by Daniel Kehlmann is a sharp, darkly comic book that explores power, manipulation, and the blurred lines between performance and reality. Kehlmann’s prose is lean and precise.

The book packs a quiet but unnerving punch, drawing readers into a world where artistic ambition teeters on the edge of cruelty. It’s a haunting exploration of ego, influence, and the fine line between brilliance and tyranny.

The Director tells the story of Austrian film director G. W. Pabst who found himself trapped after the annexation of his country, apparently with no choice but to produce films for Goebbels’s Ministry of Public Enlightenment Propaganda.
After a spell working in Paris, Pabst took his family to Hollywood, far away from the trouble brewing in Europe, hoping to pitch an idea which falls flat thanks to his poor English and no one knowing who he is. After an alarming telegram from his mother, the family return home where Ericka is looked after by a couple straight out of Cold Comfort Farm. Despite his determined refusal to work for the Nazis, he finds he has no choice, or perhaps he convinces himself of that. Pabst has already compromised himself working with Leni Riefenstahl in the late 20s, but this will be a much greater betrayal of his ideals, one which sees Trude take to drink. He begins to think of his work as art, fashioning his last film into a masterpiece in his own head despite the flimsy plot of the book on which it's based. The Molander Case is close to completion in Prague when the Uprising opens the doors for the Russians. Pabst and his assistant catch the last train to Vienna carrying seven reels of film with them.
Daniel Kehlmann is at pains to point out that his book is a work of fiction with very little in the way of primary sources to draw on. Pabst sank into obscurity after the war, his reputation destroyed with little trace left of him in cinema history. It’s a fascinating story, executed well, but not my favourite Kehlmann which is a tossup between the door stopping Tyll, set in the seventeenth century, and You Should Have Left, a slim slice of contemporary gothic