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Overview
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.
Already a bestseller in Germany, this brilliant and gently comic novel chronicles the lives to two young geniuses who during the Enlightenment of the 18th century set out to measure the world. Abridged. 7 CDs.
Synopsis
Already a bestseller in Germany, this brilliant and gently comic novel chronicles the lives to two young geniuses who during the Enlightenment of the 18th century set out to measure the world. Abridged. 7 CDs.
The Washington Post - Ron Charles
Measuring the World has sat on the German bestseller list for more than a year and sold more than 750,000 copies. In the American book market, that would require a teenage wizard or at least a conspiracy of crooked Jesuits. But 31-year-old Daniel Kehlmann is entertaining his countrymen with a story about Enlightenment-era scientists and references to isothermal lines and modular arithmetic. This sounds like something to be printed on graph paper, but it's actually more zany than brainy, and laughter almost drowns out the strains of despair running beneath the story.
Editorials
Ron Charles
Measuring the World has sat on the German bestseller list for more than a year and sold more than 750,000 copies. In the American book market, that would require a teenage wizard or at least a conspiracy of crooked Jesuits. But 31-year-old Daniel Kehlmann is entertaining his countrymen with a story about Enlightenment-era scientists and references to isothermal lines and modular arithmetic. This sounds like something to be printed on graph paper, but it's actually more zany than brainy, and laughter almost drowns out the strains of despair running beneath the story.— The Washington Post
Tom LeClair
There are younger American novelists whom Kehlmann resembles: Neal Stephenson in his "Baroque Cycle" of historical fictions, Richard Powers in his several novels about scientists. What distinguishes Kehlmann are quickness of pace and lightness of touch. He has said he admires “The Simpsons.” If Humboldt and Gauss are occasionally cartoonish, they are the creations of a very smart, deft artist. And one who demonstrates in his final chapters that he can measure the woes of failing bodies and flailing minds, no small achievement for a man of 31.— The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Strong stays out of the way of Kehlmann's dry, sardonic humor, letting the words tell the jokes, rather than their teller. The German author's debut novel, an enormous success in Europe, turns the scientific exploits of the legendary scientists Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss into a rollicking buddy picture framed by racing scientific and political change. Strong avoids German accents or overly broad characterizations in favor of the author's Enlightenment-fueled spirit of intellectual absorption and intense dedication, and a more modern sense of subtle humorous intent. Strong's voice, so modern and American in its flat, frictionless flow, balances the competing elements of Kehlmann's novel, offering a reading at once humorous and measured, sweet and filling. Simultaneous release with the Pantheon hardcover (Reviews, Sept. 25). (Jan.)
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