International Booker shortlist: Daniel Kehlmann’s ‘The Director’ novelises the art of propaganda

“You have to be extremely careful not to say anything wrong, even more so since the beginning of the war. But once you get used to it and know the rules, you feel almost free.”

I began reading Daniel Kehlmann’s novel, The Director, without any suspicion that GW Pabst, the protagonist, was a real person. First published in German as Lichtspiel in 2023 and translated by Ross Benjamin, the novel featuring the Weimar Republic’s foremost director has been shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize.

Real life

Pabst grew up in Vienna and studied drama at the Academy of Decorative Arts travelled to the US in 1919 to work at the German Theatre in New York City. In 1914, he decided to become a director, and he returned to recruit actors in Europe. His films of the late 1920s and ’30s placed a strong emphasis on the interrelationship between social conditions and the individual.

However, by the mid-1930s, the overall quality of Pabst’s films was declining. He returned to Germany when the Second World War broke out and reluctantly directed historical films imposed upon him by the Nazi regime. These included Komödianten (1941) and Paracelsus (1943), a biography of the revolutionary 16th-century German physician. He eventually moved to Vienna and made Der Prozess, a strong indictment...

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