Nosferatu: A Novel

From this prodigiously talented writer comes a stunningly original fictional life of the German director F. W. Murnau (1888-1931). Murnau ranks as a founding father of the cinema, not least for his legendary horror film, *Nosferatu*. Here he is revealed as a hermetic genius who turns against himself, becoming in a sense his own vampire. What shadows Jim Shepard's Murnau-through the airfields of the Great War to Berlin in the twenties and to the virtual invention of filmmaking-is the conflict between his impossibly high ideals and his heartbreaking memories of love betrayed and love lost. From provincial Germany through Hollywood in its early days to the South Seas, *Nosferatu* charts a life at once artistic, intellectual, and deeply human. Ron Hansen provides an introduction to this Bison Books edition.