Measuring the World

Kehlmann, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 184724114X ISBN 13: 9781847241146

Publisher: riverrun, 2007

Measuring the World recreates the parallel but contrasting lives of two geniuses of the German Enlightenment - the naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt and the mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss. Towards the end of the 18th century, these two brilliant young Germans set out to measure the world.

Humboldt, a Prussian aristocrat schooled for greatness, negotiates savannah and jungle, climbs the highest mountain then known to man, counts head lice on the heads of the natives, and explores every hole in the ground.

Gauss, a man born in poverty who will be recognised as the greatest mathematician since Newton, does not even need to leave his home in Göttingen to know that space is curved. He can run prime numbers in his head, cannot imagine a life without women and yet jumps out of bed on his wedding night to jot down a mathematical formula.

Measuring the World is a novel of rare charm and readability, distinguished by its sly humour and unforgettable characterization. It brings the two eccentric geniuses to life, their longings and their weaknesses, their balancing act between loneliness and love, absurdity and greatness, failure and success.

Review:

'A dazzling success ... Fantastically imagined' (Daily Telegraph)

'Pulsing with fictional energy ... Here for once is a popular hit as sophisticated as it is engaging' (Sunday Times)

'Nothing less than a literary sensation' (Guardian)

'This is a masterpiece' (Independent on Sunday)

'Kehlmann is one of the brightest, most pleasure-giving writers at work today, and he manages all this while exploring matters of deep philosophical and intellectual import. He deserves to have more readers' (Jeffrey Eugenides)

From the Publisher:

Reviews for Measuring the World:

Measuring the World has proved nothing less than a literary sensation...
the novel has sold more than 600,000 copies in Germany, knocking J K
Rowling and Dan Brown off the bestseller lists... it is the most successful
German novel since Patrick Suskind's Perfume... 31-year-old Daniel Kehlmann
is a literary wunderkind already being compared to Nabokov and Proust -
Guardian

I felt so enlivened by reading this delightful novel, finishing the book
with such good cheer and hope... the sense of boundless possibility, the
excitement of discovery...optimism and hope...a wonderful novel instantly
clamouring to be made my top choice - Sue Baker, Publishing News