In his new novel, Kehlmann tells of how it became dark in Germany – a book about the past that fits only too well into the present.
About halfway through the novel, its hero, the director Georg Wilhelm Pabst, enters Joseph Goebbels’ office, a nightmarish hall at the end of which sits the man who makes death threats in the Rhenish euphony. A lot of things seem like a nightmare: the minister appears twice, and when he smashes his phone, technicians, like magical monsters, rush to install a new device. Pabst, who thought Goebbels was trying to woo him, soon realized that he was sitting here because he was supposed to apologize. For leaving the country. And for making a film, “The Joyless Alley”, half an eternity ago, which seemed communist to the National Socialists.