Die Vermessung der Welt
by Daniel Kehlmann · first published 2005
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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
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…book titles in german, too lazy to look up on mobile) He is a talented writer for sure, and I enjoy him the most in his non-historic works. tbh, when he became a best selling author in German with his "Die Vermessung der Welt", I enjoyed the book but considered him a somewhat audience-pleasing and shallow author. His other books pleasantly surprised me. Disclaimer, saying this as someone who reads much too rarely, not a…
on “Don't wake me up too soon” ↗…readers then it won't get translated from German into French, say? (I'm just guessing: please correct me if I'm wrong.) The last German novel I encountered as a popular book in English translation was "Die Vermessung der Welt" / "Measuring the world". The first German science fiction that comes to my mind ... "Die Haarteppichknüpfer" (great book from 1995): no idea if it sold well in English. Science fiction, like crime fiction,…
on “How to Be a Professional Author and Not Die Screaming and Starving” ↗