Fans of vaudevillian grandeur will remember Daniel Kehlmann’s 2017 novel Tyll, a surreal account of the Thirty Years’ War translated from the German by Ross Benjamin. The Director marks the return of Kehlmann and Benjamin to the world of historical fiction, a return foreshadowed last year in Christian Kracht’s Eurotrash, which sees the fictionalised Kracht mistaken for Kehlmann in a series of absurd encounters.
The Director follows the life and career of famed Weimar-era filmmaker G. W. Pabst in his professional struggles against the Nazi establishment. There is a peculiar kind of German fairytale grimace which flickers up in times of despair, and Kehlmann’s latest novel evokes the bitter farce of the Third Reich in a manner both ruthless and chillingly comic.
Pabst’s ill-fated return to Ostmark sees him quickly swept into a Faustian bargain with ‘Herr Doktor’ Joseph Goebbels, who promises him “Deep films for deep people”. Pabst’s prospects are grim. Will his legacy be forever tarnished? Or will the nightmare of the Reich be one day forgotten? - Elijah
