Reading guide: The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin
Exposing the dangerous illusions of the silver screen, The Director explores the complicated relationships between art and power, beauty and barbarism, cog and conspirator
Ross Benjamin
Ross Benjamin is the translator of numerous works of German-language literature
His translations include Franz Kafka’s Diaries, Clemens J. Setz’s Indigo, Joseph Roth’s Job, Kevin Vennemann’s Close to Jedenew, Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion, and Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll and You Should Have Left.
The recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim fellowship, Benjamin was also awarded the 2010 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his rendering of Michael Maar’s Speak, Nabokov.
His translation of Tyll was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020, and his translation of Kehlmann’s The Director was shortlisted for the same prize in 2026.
Author photo © David Schloss
Deeply intelligent, ambitiously structured and unputdownable
— The International Booker Prize 2026 judges on The Director
All nominated books
In a brilliant, riotous tale full of macabre humour, Daniel Kehlmann lifts a jester legend from German folklore and puts him into the Thirty Years War
Translated by Ross Benjamin
An artist’s life and a pact with the devil: this is a novel about the dangerous illusions of the silver screen
Translated by Ross Benjamin
