This month we will be reading
The Director
by Daniel Kehlman (translator Ross Benjamin)

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)

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. (Summit Books)

S&S/Summit Books, 2025, 352 pp

We hope that you will join us to discuss this highly praised novel.