The Director

Reviews / Votes

What a great read! The writer seduced me into his world in much the same mesmerising way that Bergman might do in one of his films. A wonderful novel -- Jeremy Irons Fascinating ... an honest, empathetic and respectful account of creativity, flowing from a unique mind to affect other people's lives, made with Bergmanesque spareness and attention to detail, a vivid tribute to the Shakespeare of our age. -- Paul Binding * Independent on Sunday * A Scandinavian version of Fellini's Eight and a Half, the novel melts the imagined and remembered. It also catches the physical atmosphere of Sweden, both warming and chill - like Bergman's relationships. -- Martin Hoyle * Financial Times * Lovely, poetic prose * Metro * The language is precise, every word carefully weighed. Seventeen years in the honing, the novel created a furore on publication in Sweden, where Bergman vented his displeasure on national television, thereby doubtless generating some extra sales. It is a sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, always surprising novel that constantly blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. * Swedish Book Review * An utterly strange, original and unsettling novel, published while its subject was still living, The Director arrests our attention like an autopsy performed on a living man -- Joyce Carol Oates An intriguing experiment -- Alfred Hickling * Guardian * The real subject of The Director is how the boundaries between life and fiction are dissolved - by the creator himself, who recklessly subordinates everything and everyone to his creation, but also by the artful language in its own right. When this language takes the lead, what we call life and what we call fiction can no longer be separate. Many have had the same idea, Strindberg for example, in A Dream-Play, but very few have realised it with such merriness and so delightfully..., chiselled with such pleasure as Ahndoril. Is The Director a satire or an homage, a parricide in the name of art or a loveletter? It is, of course, both. And that is what makes it so rich. * Svenska Dagbladet *