About this Event
About this Event
Daniel Kehlmann discusses and signs THE DIRECTOR
Wednesday, May 20th at 7:00 pm ET
Barnes & Noble Georgetown
3040 M St NW | 3rd Floor
Washington, DC 20007
Join us for a very special book talk with Daniel Kehlmann, the author of THE DIRECTOR, a Booker Prize longlist and New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year, now available in paperback!
ABOUT THE BOOK
LONGLISTED FOR THE 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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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Barnes & Noble Georgetown, 3040 M Street Northwest, Washington, United States
USD 0.00
