site.btaIn His New Novel, Daniel Kehlmann Wanted to Tell a Story About Everyday Compromises in the Third Reich

Talking about his novel, Lichtspiel, at a meeting with Bulgarian readers at Goethe-Institut on Friday evening, German-Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann said that he wanted to tell a story about the everyday compromises people made in the Third Reich, but he did not want to focus on monstrous crimes.

In the end, the novel turned out to be quite political, although the author wanted to write about a grand era, the time of Expressionism during the silent film period in Germany. He originally intended to create a fictional character, a film director from the 1920s, so he read a lot of literature and saw many films.

Kehlmann was particularly intrigued by the story of filmmaker Georg Wilhelm Pabst. He was in Hollywood but returned to Germany, making several films during the Nazi era and a few more after the war. Pabst cannot be described as a Nazi, the author said.

The writer started the novel with a familiar narrative about an immigrant living in America. And then comes the twist - he decides to return, and the storyteller can travel along with him. In Kehlmann's view, cinema is an art often entangled with moral compromises. But if someone has managed to escape the Third Reich and make it to Hollywood, the rule is - you don't go back, he said.

Svetlozar Zhelev, an expert on literature, the media and book publishing, said authors of Daniel Kehlmann's calibre rarely visit Bulgaria. He noted that Kehlmann's work consistently intertwines historical figures or events with fiction. "Another crucial theme in his writing is the artist and art itself - the way art and the artist respond to the world," Zhelev added.

Janina Dragostinova, who translated Lichtspiel, admitted that the translation process had its challenges but they were quickly forgotten: "Daniel Kehlmann is probably the only author who makes me laugh out loud while translating."

Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975. He is the author of the novels Measuring the World, Fame, Me and Kaminski, and Tyll. His plays include The Mentor and Ghosts in Princeton, among others. He has received numerous literary awards, including the Candide Prize (2005), the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (2006), the Heinrich von Kleist Prize (2006), the Die Welt Literature Prize (2007), the Thomas Mann Prize (2008), and the Frank Schirrmacher Prize (2018).