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.

Having a profound experience on a hypnotist's stage in spite of not believing in magic, Arthur abruptly abandons his family in the middle of the night and becomes a famous author while his sons grow into men shaped by loss and doubt.

From the internationally best-selling author Daniel Kehlmann, a provocative and wickedly funny novel about two unpredictable menone an artist and the other a journalist, who together embark on an unexpected adventure with uproarious results. Sebastian Zollner's failure as a journalist is matched only by his personal failures: his girlfriend is moving in a new lover before Sebastian even knows he's been dumped. Searching for the break that will redeem him in the eyes of his peers, he heads off on a wild goose chase into the mountains to interview the eccentric, legendary painter Manuel Kaminski, with the hope of writing his biography. Kaminski is going blind and is living in seclusion with his daughter. He could be working on his next masterpiece or easing into his final days, and his inconsistent career raises the question of whether he has been a fraud or a genius. His artistic reputation hinges on any number of factors but most prominently on a definitive biography. Enter Zollnerwho has no intention of writing a puff piece. He's out to dig dirt and to force Kaminski to confront the legacy of his work. But the secrets he uncovers will lead Kaminski, and Zollner himself, to places neither of them ever expected to go. With edgy wit and intelligence, Daniel Kehlmann dives into the problems of what is "truth" in our celebrity-crazed times and embraces the energy and humanity that lie beneath the pretensions of the art and journalistic worlds. A firecracker of a novel. From the Hardcover edition.