🔉Thank you to Daniel Kehlmann, Simon & Schuster/ S&S Summit Books, and NetGalley for this arc of The Director, out May 6, 2025!

📜Quick Summary: During the onset of World War 2, Austrian director G.W. Pabst is on the way to having a career in film. As the Nazi’s took power, he decided to flee to California, take his chances in Hollywood. But as his elderly mother gets sick, he is forced to come home to Austria. This choice causes his family to see the awful ways of the regime, which now is coming after his artistic abilities. Can he hold strong? Or will he give in and create films that would benefit the dictatorship?

❣️Initial Feels: I enjoy reading historical fiction; it’s for sure a top three category for me. As difficult a subject as WW2 and Nazi regime is, I am enthralled in learning more about that part of our history. I can tell this will be a heavy read,but the depth of his writing is evident in all the pages.

👀Trigger Warnings: Nazi era, war

📖Read if you want: history of cinema, art, WW2, complicated relationships and friendships, different point of view chapters

💡Final Sentiments: This is my first novel that I’ve read that has been translated from another language. I’ve heard about Daniel Kehlmann’s works, and I was thrilled to receive an arc of this novel, The Director. When the novel first opens up, we meet Pabst’s aging former assistant, who is losing his mind and memories. When questioned about a lost film, he remains adamant that it was never filmed. Franz Wilzek sure makes a show of himself on the show itself, and he becomes such a vital piece to the unraveling of Pabst as a character. There were a lot of names, a lot of German names, places, etc to keep track of. At times I felt overwhelmed reading, and found myself rereading certain parts a second time. Trude was a great character and I wish I had more time with her. Be prepared to fully invest your thoughts and time on this read! I think if you are familiar with this time period, are invested in history and don’t get as confused as I am…you will truly love this. I don’t think I was the perfect audience for this novel, but that’s a me problem, not an author issue.

🌟Overall Rating: 4 / 4.5 stars

This novel was provided by the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

Yes, Kehlmann brilliantly recreates the ww2 period in Europe and the moral dilemmas facing the artist..in this case..a film director. But, in my opinion, he fails to bring to life G.W. Pabst and the surrounding characters. Pabst et al function more to bring the period and dilemmas to life than as people one gets to know and cares about. Additionally, there were times when I was confused as to who the first person character was, the time period and place. Of course, this may be intentional on the author's part. . Since I am a film buff I was totally fascinated by the detailed sections dealing with film making. But, a
non-film buff may decide to skip these sections. Needless to say my recommendations will contain all of the foregoing caveats.

Daniel Kehlmann's new novel is a dark and moving portrait of the famous Austrian filmmaker G.W. Pabst (1895-1967), about a lost film and about working as an artist under an authoritarian regime, told in cinematic language. If you are interested in the history of cinema, this is fascinating.

The opening chapter of the book, a flash forward, is one of the most intriguing I ever read: years after Pabst's death, an elderly and forgetful former assistant of his is interviewed for Austrian television, about his cooperation with Pabst during the war. He unexpectedly gets a question about the film 'Der Fall Molander' which was shot in Prague under difficult circumstances in the final months of the war. The film is lost, but the assistant vehemently insists it was never shot.

Then we go back in time to the 1930s and the focus shifts to Pabst, who had first escaped Nazi Germany to Hollywood (like Fritz Lang and other colleagues) but makes a terrible miscalculation and moves back to the Reich for family reasons. He ends up trapped there when the war starts.

The book has everything I love from Daniel Kehlmann: an original historical topic (I always wonder how he comes up with his topics), smart dialogue (I had to laugh often despite the disturbing circumstances), a good plot to get immersed in (much of it invented I suspect, because it is a novel, not a biography) and raising interesting moral questions. Tyll will remain my personal favourite, but this is an incredible novel too.

And now starts a period of another 3-4 years of waiting for his next...