“People were many things before the war, and then they were something completely different. I'm telling you, it's all mixed-up and jumbled.” – Daniel Kehlmann
LiveMint's quote for the day is by Daniel Kehlmann, the only male author shortlisted for the International Booker 2026. Kehlmann captured the profound instability of the human identity when faced with total societal collapse.
With this quote, he explores how the “civilised” self can be completely overwritten by the demands of survival and power during wartime.
Kehlmann rejected the idea of a fixed, essential soul. Instead, he posits that human character is contingent upon circumstances.
What does the quote mean
Kehlmann said war destroys the logic of people who go through it. The people who once viewed their lives as a steady, logical progression are forced to become a soldier, an informant, or a pacifist to become a collaborator. The before and after versions of people who go through often cannot recognise one another.
He also made a cynical but realistic observation about moral fluidity in his quote.
Kehlmann suggested that character is not an immutable rock, but rather something shaped by the environment. When the environment becomes a "war," the previous rules of ethics and identity are discarded, leaving people as "something completely different"—often something they themselves never thought possible.
Relevance in the present day
Several countries, such as Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza, are currently facing a state of war. Currently, its global implications are only economic.
But for them, Kehlmann's "jumbled" nature of identity is highly relevant.
A software engineer from Kyiv or a teacher from Gaza becomes "Refugee" or "Combatant" overnight. Their professional and personal histories—the "many things" they were before—are often erased or made irrelevant by the singular, urgent identity forced upon them by conflict.
On a less violent but equally pervasive scale, the COVID-19 pandemic served as a global rupture. It forced a massive segment of the population to reconsider who they were.
The "before" person who valued a 60-hour office work week became a "different" person who prioritises remote flexibility or has left their industry entirely. The continuity of many lives was "jumbled," leading to the mass career shifts and lifestyle changes we see today.
In the age of social media and intense political division, we often see people undergo a "jumbling" of identity. Friends or family members who were once moderate or apolitical can appear to become "something completely different" due to radicalisation or the "echo chamber" effect.
Their previous persona seems to have been discarded in favour of a new, often more aggressive, ideological identity.
Where does this quote come from
The quote is from Daniel Kehlmann's International Booker-nominee “The Director,” set in the Nazi-controlled film industry.
Kehlmann told the organisers of this prestigious award that the inspiration of the book was a film – “the strange moral glamour of the medium, and the way it can make compromise look like professionalism.”
He said the life of his book's protagonist, filmmaker GW Pabst, offered him an entrance into a dictatorship from the angle of someone returning from ‘a free country’ and learning the rules as he goes.
“I wasn’t interested in the monstrous villains – others have written the necessary books about them – but in the everyday complicities: the small workplace bargains, the club meetings, the casual blindness,” Kehlmann said. “And then there was the delicious novelistic temptation of a vanished film: to ‘shoot’ it on paper, and let the reader watch.”
“There was the delicious novelistic temptation of a vanished film: to ‘shoot’ it on paper, and let the reader watch,” Kehlmann said.
The book has been translated into English by Ross Benjamin.
Who is Daniel Kehlmann
Daniel Kehlmann is a German-Austrian writer. His bestselling book “The Director” is an International Booker 2026 nominee.
Kehlmann is known for darkly funny historical novels and is the only male author on the list.
Kehlmann has won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Doderer Prize, The Kleist Prize, the WELT Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize.
International Booker 2026: Shortlist
The books on this year's list feature "unforgettable characters" and "reverberate with history", said the chair of the judges, British novelist Natasha Brown.
About the International Booker
The prestigious award recognises works of fiction from around the world that have been translated into English.
The International Booker Prize 2026 will be handed out at a ceremony at London's Tate Modern gallery on May 19. The £50,000 ($62,000) prize is split equally between the author and the translator.
This is the 10th year that the prize has been awarded in its current form. Organisers say the award gives the authors a significant boost in profile and sales.
About the Author
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