First published 2025
G.W. Pabst stands under the California sun, a celebrated European filmmaker reduced to nobody status in Hollywood. The Nazi rise to power drove him from Germany to America, where even Greta Garbo, the star he once made famous, cannot restore his position. Word arrives that his mother lies ill in Austria, now renamed Ostmark under Nazi control. Pabst returns with his wife and young son, confronting the regime's brutality firsthand. Then Joseph Goebbels arrives with an offer wrapped in threat. The propaganda minister recognizes Pabst's talent and makes grand promises to secure his services for the Reich. Pabst believes he can resist, that he serves only the dictatorship of art itself. Yet each small compromise draws him deeper into an impossible trap. Kehlmann crafts a story where artistic integrity collides with survival, where a man discovers that neutrality becomes collaboration by degrees.
Genres: drama, art, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, biographical-fiction
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, fish-out-of-water
Setting: Austria, California, Germany, Hollywood
Period: Nazi Rise to Power, World War II
352 pages · Hardcover · S&S/Summit Books