Daniel Birnbaum, b. 1963, is heralded as one of the world's most prominent art curators and currently director of Acute Art i London. He has previously managed both museums and art schools in Germany and Italy and he curated the Venice Biennale. Daniel is a contributing editor to Artforum in New York and contributes regularly to numerous British and American art magazines including frieze. Art review (London) has regularly listed him among the hundred most influential people in the art world and the year he curated the Venice Biennale he was listed as number 4 in the world. DR. B. is his first work of fiction, and it tells the story of his grandfather Immanuel Birnbaum.
'If you're looking for a ridiculously brilliant story, you can stop looking ... He's got the world's best story - he's got Dr B' Svenska Dagbladet 'Dr B is an astonishing thriller-novel ... reminiscent of both Hjalmar Soederberg's Doctor Glass as well as the dreamy melancholy in The Rings of Saturn by W.G Sebald ... This moral ambiguity makes Dr. B. no less fascinating a character than Stefan Zweig's version of the same' Aftonbladet 'A moving evocation of a life beset by conflicts in a troubled time' Kirkus Reviews 'Illuminating ... Birnbaum skillfully delineates the social and political tensions shaping a culture caught between the national interests of Germany and Russia, and he poignantly conveys the plight of individuals for whom each day is a potential tragedy waiting to happen' Publishers Weekly 'Who was Dr. B.? A spy? A member of the resistance? A journalist manipulated by competing political forces in the Casablanca of the North that was Stockholm during World War II? Dr. B brings to life the feverish atmosphere of the capital ... where Immanuel Birnbaum becomes entangled in a whirlwind of confusing intrigue' Le Monde 'An impressive debut ... Using material that could easily have been a political thriller, Birnbaum chose to write an existential story that is nonetheless political ... with great attention to curious details and told through the eyes of a refugee' Landskrona Posten 'A spy novel as complex as it is captivating ... Dr. B. evokes so vividly the apocalyptic chaos of 1939-40 Stockholm, where different political forces jockey for power ... and Immanuel Birnbaum, Dr. B, finds himself caught in the confusion' Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung