Daniel Kehlmann Discusses Booker Shortlisted THE DIRECTOR with David Frum

Daniel Kehlmann discusses and signs THE DIRECTOR
In-Conversation with The Atlantic's David Frum
Monday, June 1, at 7:00 pm ET
Barnes & Noble Georgetown
3040 M St NW | 3rd Floor
Washington, DC 20007
Join us for a very special evening with Daniel Kehlmann, author of THE DIRECTOR, which has just been named to the International Booker Prize Shortlist.

Daniel Kehlmann will be in conversation with David Frum, a writer for The Atlantic and the host of the weekly podcast

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE • A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR • AN NYPL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A Washington Post NOTABLE BOOK • A LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT BOOK CLUB PICK

“Nothing short of brilliant.” —The Wall Street Journal

From “a surpassingly gifted storyteller” (The New York Times), a visionary novel inspired by the life of film director G.W. Pabst, who fled to Hollywood to resist the Nazis only to return to his homeland to create propaganda films for the German Reich.

An artist’s life, a pact with the devil, and the dangerous illusions of the silver screen.

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.

Kehlmann’s latest oeuvre explores the complicated relationships and distinctions between art and power, beauty and barbarism, cog and conspirator.

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Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975. His novels and plays have won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Welt Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. His novel Tyll was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize, and Measuring the World has been translated into more than forty languages and is one of the biggest successes in post-war German literature. He currently lives in Berlin and New York.

ABOUT DAVID FRUM

David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the host of the weekly podcast The David Frum Show. He is the author of 10 books, most recently Trumpocracy (2018) and Trumpocalypse (2020). In 2001 and 2002, David was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush. From 2014 to 2017, he chaired the prominent U.K. center-right think tank, Policy Exchange. He writes for The Atlantic on topics including politics, policy, art, literature, and history.

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