Product Description

The Director is Ingmar Bergman; the time is 1961; and the setting is the shooting of Winter Light, a film about how his life would have been, had he followed his father's wishes and become a priest. As actors and crew gather to film this alternative destiny, Bergman tries to draw his father into the process, but quickly finds himself plunged back into the emotions of his childhood - both terrorised by his brutal and dominating father, and desperately longing for his approval - and reality gradually begins to crack and crumble, tipping him into a world of false memories and dangerous fantasies. Compelling and breathtakingly original, "The Director" mixes biographical fact with a wild kaleidoscopic imagination to reveal the boy and the man behind the great film-maker.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #698975 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-01
• Original language: Swedish
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Review
'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 'An utterly strange, original and unsettling novelA" published while its subject was still living, The Director arrests our attention like an autopsy performed on a living man.' Joyce Carol Oates

Metro
`lovely, poetic prose'

About the Author
ALEXANDER AHNDORIL is one of Sweden's most celebrated, dynamic and original younger writers, the author of eight novels and ten plays, as well as short stories, essays and screenplays. This is his UK debut.

Customer Reviews

Winter Light
This book is based on an intriguing idea - a fictionalised account of Ingmar Bergman's personal and working life while making his 1961 film 'Winter Light' based on some known facts, and a lot of speculation and imagination. The late great Director of the book's title was apparently none too pleased about this book, but for fans of his films (like myself) it might be too difficult to resist the temptation to read this story - which in turn gives you a renewed enthusiasm for 'Winter Light'.

On the whole this novel works well - the real people involved (chiefly IB, his actors and his wife) are convincingly drawn, and most of all, the prose is spare, unpretentious and readable - almost a mirror of the simple, clear images of the film. Bergman's angst as an artist and film-maker are well documented elsewhere both in hos own autobiographical works and in other critical studies but this book by Ahndoril offers a fresh approach to what his creative process *may* have been like. For Ingmar Bergman's many fans, therefore, this is a treat, if also something of a guilty pleasure.