Light and Shadow

«Light and Shadow» – a novel about art and power, about the creator and the totalitarian state, about fear, temptation, and evil. At the center of the narrative is the fate of the great director Georg Wilhelm Pabst: a cinema genius, an emigrant who had to return to the Hitlerian Reich. He still believes that he will not succumb to the temptation to collaborate with a barbaric inhumane regime, that he will not submit to any other dictatorship but the dictatorship of art, but he has already taken his first step into a trap from which he cannot escape…

The German and Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann was born in 1975 in Munich. A star of contemporary German prose, he is one of the greatest modern prose writers, the author of bestselling novels «Measuring the World», «F», «Tyll». He is the recipient of many literary awards and a nominee for the International Booker Prize. Kehlmann's style combines the authenticity and precision of realism with a perfectly measured dose of fantasy – in this regard, he inherits the long-standing traditions of German literature.

The novel «Light and Shadow» is terrifying and beautiful. It is beautiful not only for its relevance (although many moments in it seem to be taken from today's news or from debates on social media), but above all for the author's mastery: Kehlmann writes in such a way that it is immediately clear – we have before us a master of the highest literary league. In telling about people in cinema, the novel unfolds before us like a real film – in visible, precise mise-en-scènes.