The young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann conjures a brilliant and gently comic novel from the lives of two geniuses of the Enlightenment. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Hum-boldt, negotiates savanna and jungle, travels down the Orinoco, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores every hole in the ground. The other, the barely socialized mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss, does not even need to leave his home in Gottingen to prove that space is curved. He can run prime numbers in his head. He cannot imagine a life without women, yet he jumps out of bed on his wedding night to jot down a mathematical formula. Von Humboldt is known to history as the Second Columbus. Gauss is recognized as the greatest mathematical brain since Newton. Terrifyingly famous and more than eccentric in their old age, the two meet in Berlin in 1828. Gauss has hardly climbed out of his carriage before both men are embroiled in the political turmoil sweeping through Germany after Napoleon's fall.Already a huge best seller in Germany, Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene.From the Hardcover edition.
The young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann conjures a brilliant and gently comic novel from the lives of two geniuses of the Enlightenment. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Hum-boldt, negotiates savanna and jungle, travels down the Orinoco, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores every hole in the ground. The other, the barely socialized mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss, does not even need to leave his home in Gottingen to prove that space is curved. He can run prime numbers in his head. He cannot imagine a life without women, yet he jumps out of bed on his wedding night to jot down a mathematical formula. Von Humboldt is known to history as the Second Columbus. Gauss is recognized as the greatest mathematical brain since Newton. Terrifyingly famous and more than eccentric in their old age, the two meet in Berlin in 1828. Gauss has hardly climbed out of his carriage before both men are embroiled in the political turmoil sweeping through Germany after Napoleon's fall.Already a huge best seller in Germany, Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene.From the Hardcover edition.
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4 books in catalog
Historical fiction and metaphysical satire take central stage in international German-language literature through inventive reimaginings of historical icons, scientific ambition, and folklore. The novelist and playwright Daniel Kehlmann achieved widespread recognition with Measuring the World, an inventive historical novel depicting the contrasting lives and methods of mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.
Born in Munich on January 13, 1975, Daniel Kehlmann is the son of television director Michael Kehlmann and actress Dagmar Mettler. He moved with his parents to Vienna at age six, growing up in the city's 23rd district and obtaining dual German and Austrian citizenship. Kehlmann published his early literary works while completing his studies, quickly building an international readership. His breakout novel, Measuring the World (2005), became one of the most commercially and critically successful post-war German novels and was translated into more than forty languages. He continued publishing acclaimed fiction including Me and Kaminski, Fame, F, and The Director. In 2017, he published Tyll, translated into English by Ross Benjamin, which reimagined the folklore trickster Tyll Ulenspiegel against the backdrop of the Thirty Years' War and was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize. Over his career, Kehlmann has been honored with major awards such as the Candide Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize, the WELT Literature Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and the Thomas Mann Prize. He divides his time between Vienna, Berlin, and New York.
Kehlmann's prose is characterized by its blend of meticulous historical research, philosophical inquiries into truth, and dark, metafictional humor. His works frequently investigate the boundary between reality and fiction, the fallibility of memory, and the tragicomic limits of human reason. In works such as the 2016 psychological novella You Should Have Left, he utilizes elements of horror and spatial disorientation to trace a screenwriter's mental breakdown in an isolated mountain home. Across his historical novels and contemporary satires, his writing balances philosophical depth with accessible, swift narrative structure.
4 books in catalog
Historical fiction and metaphysical satire take central stage in international German-language literature through inventive reimaginings of historical icons, scientific ambition, and folklore. The novelist and playwright Daniel Kehlmann achieved widespread recognition with Measuring the World, an inventive historical novel depicting the contrasting lives and methods of mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.
Born in Munich on January 13, 1975, Daniel Kehlmann is the son of television director Michael Kehlmann and actress Dagmar Mettler. He moved with his parents to Vienna at age six, growing up in the city's 23rd district and obtaining dual German and Austrian citizenship. Kehlmann published his early literary works while completing his studies, quickly building an international readership. His breakout novel, Measuring the World (2005), became one of the most commercially and critically successful post-war German novels and was translated into more than forty languages. He continued publishing acclaimed fiction including Me and Kaminski, Fame, F, and The Director. In 2017, he published Tyll, translated into English by Ross Benjamin, which reimagined the folklore trickster Tyll Ulenspiegel against the backdrop of the Thirty Years' War and was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize. Over his career, Kehlmann has been honored with major awards such as the Candide Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize, the WELT Literature Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and the Thomas Mann Prize. He divides his time between Vienna, Berlin, and New York.
Kehlmann's prose is characterized by its blend of meticulous historical research, philosophical inquiries into truth, and dark, metafictional humor. His works frequently investigate the boundary between reality and fiction, the fallibility of memory, and the tragicomic limits of human reason. In works such as the 2016 psychological novella You Should Have Left, he utilizes elements of horror and spatial disorientation to trace a screenwriter's mental breakdown in an isolated mountain home. Across his historical novels and contemporary satires, his writing balances philosophical depth with accessible, swift narrative structure.
