Chiaroscuro is a novel about art and power, about the creator and the totalitarian state, about fear, temptation and evil. The story focuses on the fate of the great director Georg Wilhelm Pabst: a film genius, an emigrant who had to return to Hitler's Reich. He still believes that he will not succumb to the temptation of cooperation with a barbaric, inhuman regime, that he will not submit to any other dictatorship except the dictatorship of art, but he has already taken his first step towards a trap from which he cannot escape... German and Austrian writer Daniel Kelman was born in 1975 in Munich. The star of modern German prose, one of the largest modern novelists, the author of the best-selling novels "Measuring the World", "F", "Till". Winner of many literary awards, International Booker Prize nominee. Kelman's style combines the authenticity and precision of realism with a perfectly measured dose of phantasmagoria – in this respect, he inherits the long traditions of German literature. The novel "Chiaroscuro" is scary and beautiful. It is beautiful not only for its relevance (although many of the points in it seem to be taken from today's news or from disputes in social networks), but above all for the skill of the author: Kelman writes in such a way that it is immediately clear that this is a master of the highest literary league. Telling about the people of cinema, the novel unfolds before us like a real movie – in visible, precise mise en scene. "All this madness, Franz, this hellish madness gives us the opportunity to make a great film. Without us, everything would be exactly the same, no one would be better off, no one would be saved. Only this film would not exist..." Translator Alexandra Berlina: It is fortunate that this novel about emigration, return and life under totalitarianism is published in Russian... It's hard to read about emigrants arguing about the fate of Germany in Paris cafes of the 1930s and not think about emigrants arguing about the fate of Russia in Berlin cafes of the 2020s. It's hard not to flinch when the arguments of the creative bohemians who remained in the Third Reich sound as if they are being uttered today in St. Petersburg or Moscow cuisine: "Of course, we need to watch every word, especially since the war began. But when you get used to it, when you know the rules, you feel almost free."