In America, a German-Austrian novelist hears echoes of his father's life under Nazism

In America, a German-Austrian novelist hears echoes of his father's life under Nazism

One of the earliest expressions of totalitarianism in German-Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann’s novel The Director unfolds in a classroom. In 1930, Jakob, the son of the Expressionist auteur G.W. Pabst, is acclimating to his new school in Austria, after years of being educated in America. His teachers wear the Nazi party uniform. If a pupil speaks out in class, they’re made to copy the school rules, in four longhand pages, writing against a wall …