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Published Oct 2007
272 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene. Young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann’s brilliant comic novel revolves around the meeting of two colossal geniuses of the Enlightenment.
Late in the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the aristocratic naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates jungles, voyages down the Orinoco River, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores and measures every cave and hill he comes across. The other, the reclusive and barely socialized mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, can prove that space is curved without leaving his home. Terrifyingly famous and wildly eccentric, these two polar opposites finally meet in Berlin in 1828, and are immediately embroiled in the turmoil of the post-Napolean world.
"The narrative is notable for its brisk pacing, lively prose and wry humor ... which keenly complements Kehlmann's intelligent, if not especially deep, treatment of science, mathematics and reason at the end of the Enlightenment." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. The uncomfortable humor of being, in Gauss' case, too brilliant ... suffuses Kehlmann's heady historical novel, which may especially delight science-fiction connoisseurs." - Booklist
"Steeped in German classicism and set against the topsy-turvy politics of the Napoleonic wars, this is a wonderfully entertaining depiction of an era, but, more importantly, a warm, playful portrait of two delightfully improbable men. Brilliant." - Kirkus
"A masterfully realized, wonderfully entertaining and deeply satisfying novel. ... Addictively readable and genuinely and deeply funny." - Los Angeles Times
"Kehlmann's lightly surreal style [is] a mixture of comedy, romance and the macabre, with flashes of magical realism that read like Borges in the Black Forest." - Washington Post Book World
"Elegant and measured in design and expression. ... What distinguishes Kehlmann are quickness of mind and lightness of touch." - The New York Times Book Review
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Michael Lionstar
Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 to the director Michael Kehlmann and the actress Dagmar Mettler. In 1981 he came to Vienna with his family, where he attended the Kalksburg College, a Jesuit school, and then studied philosophy and German studies at the University of Vienna. In 1997 he published his first novel Beerholms Presentation. He held poetic lectureships in Mainz, Wiesbaden and Göttingen and was awarded numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize 2006 and most recently the WELT Literature Prize 2007 excellent.
Kehlmann's reviews and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Der Spiegel, Guardian, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, ...
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