Can great art remain pure once the artist begins compromising with the world around them?

Daniel Kehlmann’s The Director, shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize, revisits the life of legendary filmmaker G.W. Pabst and opens up a fascinating moral question: What happens when artists make peace with power?

From Renaissance patronage to Hollywood studios to authoritarian regimes, artists have always depended on systems that were rarely innocent. So where do we draw the line between survival, ambition, compromise, and complicity?

📚 BOOKS MENTIONED:

• The Director by Daniel Kehlmann

• The Sisters by Jonas Khemiri

• Isola by Allegra Goodman

• Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

• Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

• Anna Karenina and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

• Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

• The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

• The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

✨ DEEPEN THE CONVERSATION

Read our complete weekly breakdowns, curated reading lists, and additional essays over on our Substack. Join our community of mature readers:

💌 Our Substack & Show Notes:

https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 EXPLORE OUR HOSTS' WORK & READING LISTS

• Read Ksenija's Novels:

https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

• Ksenija on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙️ ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS

A weekly literary podcast hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston.

From opposite sides of the Atlantic, we bring you thoughtful, relaxed, and witty conversations about contemporary fiction, classic literature, award shortlists, and the human questions hiding inside the books we read.

New episodes are released every Saturday.

👉🏻 CHAPTERS

00:00 Intro

00:44 What We’re Reading

06:42 The Director by Daniel Kehlmann

11:33 Historical Context of Artists and Power

18:05 Moral Dilemmas in Artistic Integrity

25:15 The Different Standards for Artists, Tech Bros, and Podcast Bros

30:00 Censorship in the Publishing Industry

39:03 The Nuances of Free Speech

41:06 Art, Politics, and the Artist's Responsibility

49:05 Does Great Art Require Angst?

51:14 The Compromises of Artistic Freedom

1:06:26 Book Recommendation