The Director Audiobook By Daniel Kehlmann cover art

The Director

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The Director

By: Daniel Kehlmann
Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
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A 2026 Audie Award Winner for Literary Fiction and Classics

SHORTLISTED 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. 20th Century Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Historical Fiction Thought-Provoking World Literature Celebrity
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Critic reviews

"The impact of this powerful novel is heightened by Golden Voice narrator Nicholas Boulton’s keen understanding of its author’s purposes. Kehlmann’s episodic multi-perspective imagining of the wartime career of Austrian director G.W. Pabst is technically a satire, but it registers as more of a horror story. Pabst, a leading European director, discovers Greta Garbo and Louise Brooks. But when he immigrates to Hollywood, he is misused and rejected. Returning to Vienna just as war breaks out, Pabst and his family become trapped, and are menaced by a succession of well-rendered Nazi zealots and toadies. Captured most memorably is Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, a monster of dominance and self-regard. This is not a narrative for lengthy or casual listening—or one easily forgotten."
Compelling Story • Convincing Characters • Excellent Writing • Thought-provoking Themes • Moral Focus

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Reading performance is excellent. I didn't want to stop listening and could visualize the story as I listened. Often dark and sad.

Intense Artistry

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The book cuts back and forth throughout the story telling. It’s rich with loose history and impeccable translation. Highly recommend especially if interested in historical fiction.

Amazing

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A simply dazzling reading of a simply extraordinary book. Beautifully conveys every nuance of such subtle, rich writing. As good as it could be.

Superlative in every way

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This story will stay with me for a long time. There's so much to think about. The events were awful, but the writing was flat and unemotional and wonderfully descriptive and spellbinding. I listened to it twice, each time almost in one sitting. The second time it made more sense because of the way the story is told.

The narration was also very good.

Highly recommended.

Wow

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character development key quality, in the risk undertaken in the quest for excellence in a challenging milieu

the drama in the first of war

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