Daniel Kehlmann, guest of honour at the Brussels Foire du Livre, will discuss fiction with Nicky Aerts on 13 March at Bozar. The conversation will focus on the creative process, the perpetual feeling of being a beginner, the relationship between writing and society, and lightness. Kehlmann’s renowned novels, which often draw inspiration from historical figures or events, do not strive for realism but rather seek to breathe new life into long-gone worlds. 

Kehlmann achieved success in 2005 with the publication of Measuring the World. His eleventh novel, The Director – already a bestseller in Germany – is about Georg Wilhelm Pabst, an influential director from the Weimar Republic who is remembered today for having discovered Greta Garbo and Louise Brooks. After failing in Hollywood, Pabst returns to his homeland. He becomes torn between his artistic ambitions and the compromises required of him by the regime. Pabst is portrayed with sympathy, while Leni Riefenstahl, a Nazi filmmaker, is reduced to a caricature. The book examines how art functions in totalitarian regimes, as well as how literature and film can analyse these phenomena. It also invites reflection on the current resurgence of authoritarianism. 

Daniel Kehlmann skilfully captures the suffocating nature of a dictatorship without getting bogged down in the moral complexities of guilt. He exposes the absurdity of the situation in a manner reminiscent of Lubitsch or Chaplin. For Kehlmann, the focus is less on the history itself than on the cracks it reveals, and the strange twists and turns that engaged people at the time. By exploiting these contrasts, he crafts a gripping narrative.