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The Director

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The Director

By: Daniel Kehlmann, Ross Benjamin - translator
Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
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About this listen

 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 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. 20th Century Biographical Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Funny Inspiring Celebrity

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Critic reviews

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)
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.
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.
An incomparably accomplished and inventive piece of fiction by one of the most intelligent novelists at work today.
Clear-eyed and propulsive . . . a searing look at the mechanics of complicity
Smartly entertaining...a marvelous performance - not only supple, horrifying and mordantly droll, but fluidly translated and absolutely convincing
Engrossing . . . lands in the United States at a good time . . . With a page-turning narrative that is both technically sophisticated and intellectually engaging, The Director sits at the charmed intersection of commercial and literary fiction
Daniel Kehlmann has produced a subtle, often darkly funny novel about the relationship between art and power as exemplified by a brilliant man who loses his way in a moral maze
Daniel Kehlmann's engrossing seventh novel, The Director, proves his mastery of the historical form in reconceiving the life of G. W. Pabst.
A compelling narrative . . . that combines darkness and humour as it traces Pabst's descent into ever nastier places as he chases cinematic glory
Exhilarating . . . a complex entertainment - a sorrowful fable of artistic and moral collapse, but also a novel composed with entrancing freedom, even bravura . . .[by] the leading German novelist of his generation . . . an irrepressible trickster, an endlessly fertile maker of fictional modes.
Wonderful . . . one of the best novels of the year
The Director, Kehlmann's stunning tale of what failure looks like, is a call to strengthen our spines (Susan Neiman)
Kehlmann is a master . . . moral compromises lie at the heart of this superbly imagined novel
A thrilling, vivid reconstruction of famous people caught up in the web of infamous times . . . one of the most provocative and entertaining novels of the year so far
All stars
Most relevant
A fascinating listen that is based largely on real life characters. The Director is the story of Austrian film director G. W. Pabst and his family who find themselves trapped in the German Reich when WW2 breaks out. The dilemmas faced by those caught up in the regime and how their moral compass shifts in response to events, the characters themselves and world of cinematography are insightfully portrayed.

This is a really gripping and thought provoking read and especially relevant in the current climate.
I listened to the audio version which was expertly narrated by Nicholas Boulton.

Gripping and thought provoking

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Really not very interesting to begin with and really not interesting at the end. It feels to me like a writing exercise that’s taken itself a little too seriously. A not very convincing portrayal of a film director who is so wrapped up in making movies that he loses sight of everything else. Perhaps this is intended to be a parable for the present. If so, it is not a convincing one. Faint echoes of Mann in the text. I found it unsatisfying mostly, and welcomed the end as a merciful release (as did the main protagonist, I think).

I can’t think why this was committed to paper …

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Best exploration I have read of how we can all become culpable enablers. More urgently needed than ever.

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Seamlessly great narration from Nicholas Boulton who like the very best audiobook readers can do it all: the narrative prose, the character voices.
The story is chilling, funny and educational. At a time when creatives are once again being obliterated by the money men and their AI and bottom line, not to mention the terrifying state of the world this reminds you that it's happened before.

Engrossing & fascinating

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Not sure what I was expecting, but for as much as some bits of it were genuinely depressing, it wasn’t quite as ‘real’ as I hoped it would be

Solid fictional look back at the history of films

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