We are delighted to announce that for July’s Text Book Club, we will be discussing Daniel Kehlmann’s International Booker-shortlisted debut novel, The Director.

The book club will be held upstairs in our Reading Room at 10am on Sunday 12th July, and is suitable for ages 18+. Tea and coffee will be provided.

To book your place, please click here, or to purchase a year-long subscription to our Text Book Club, please click here.

About the book - G.W. Pabst, one of cinema's greatest, perhaps the greatest director of his era: when the Nazis seized power he was filming in France, to escape the horrors of the new Germany he flees to Hollywood. But under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody.

Not even Greta Garbo, who he made famous, can help him. And thus, almost through no fault of his own, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark. The returning family is confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime.

But Goebbels, the minister of propaganda in Berlin, wants the film genius, he won't take no for an answer and makes big promises. 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. Daniel Kehlmann's novel about art and power, beauty and barbarism is a triumph.