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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
This information about Measuring the World was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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. His novels and plays have won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Welt Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. His novel Tyll was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize, and Measuring the World has been translated into more than forty languages and is one of the biggest successes in post-war German literature. He currently lives in Berlin and New York.
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