Daniel Kehlmann Books

He's a trickster, a player, a jester. His handshake's like a pact with the devil, his smile like a crack in the clouds; he's watching you now and he's gone when you turn. Tyll Ulenspiegel is here! In a village like every other in Germany, a scrawny boy balances on a rope between two trees, practicing by the mill and blacksmiths, and in the forest at night, where the Cold Woman whispers. When he emerges, he will never be the same. Tyll will escape the ordinary, defying death in the mines and outrunning cannonballs on the battlefield. As a travelling entertainer, his journey leads him through a land engulfed in a brutal war. A prince's doomed acceptance of the Bohemian throne sets European armies in conflict, casting a sunless pall over the land. Amidst the quests of fat counts, witch-hunters, and scheming queens, Tyll dances his mocking fugue, exposing the folly of kings and the wisdom of fools. With macabre humor and moving humanity, the author lifts this legend from medieval German folklore, placing him in the context of the Thirty Years' War. As citizens become pawns in the game of politics, Tyll, with his demonic grace and thirst for freedom, embodies the spirit of rebellion—a cork in water, a laugh in the dark, a timeless hero.

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.

**Shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015** Artful and subversive, F tells the story of the Friedland family - fakers, all of them - and the day when the fate in which they don't quite believe catches up with them. Having achieved nothing in life, Arthur Friedland is tricked on stage by a hypnotist and told to change everything. After he abandons his three young sons, they grow up to be a faithless priest, a broke financier and a forger. Each of them cultivates absence. One will be lost to it. A novel about the game of fate and the fetters of family, F never stops questioning, exploring and teasing at every twist and turn of its Rubik's Cube-like narrative.

From the internationally best-selling author of Measuring the World and F, an eerie and supernatural tale of a writer's emotional collapse "It is fitting that I'm beginning a new notebook up here. New surroundings and new ideas, a new beginning. Fresh air." This passage is from the first entry of a journal kept by the narrator of Daniel Kehlmann's spellbinding new novel. It is the record of the seven days that he, his wife, and his four-year-old daughter spend in a house they have rented in the mountains of Germany--a house that thwarts the expectations of the narrator's recollection and seems to defy the very laws of physics. He is eager to finish a screenplay for a sequel to the movie that launched his career, but something he cannot explain is undermining his convictions and confidence, a process he is recording in this account of the uncanny events that unfold as he tries to understand what, exactly, is happening around him--and within him.

Sebastian Zollner is searching for his big break. A failure as a journalist, a boyfriend, and a human being, he sets out to write the essential biography of the eccentric painter Manuel Kaminski. All he needs to do is ingratiate himself into Kaminski’s family, wait for him to kick the bucket, and then reap the rewards. There’s only one problem. Kaminski has an agenda of his own, an agenda that will send them on a wild-goose chase to places neither of them ever expected to go. Told with Nabokovian wit and an edgy intelligence, Me and Kaminski is a shrewd send-up of art and journalistic pretensions from the internationally acclaimed author of Measuring the World.

Einer der Größten des Kinos, vielleicht der größte Regisseur seiner Epoche: Zur Machtergreifung dreht G.W. Pabst in Frankreich; vor den Gräueln des neuen Deutschlands flieht er nach Hollywood. Aber unter der blendenden Sonne Kaliforniens sieht der weltberühmte Regisseur mit einem Mal aus wie ein Zwerg. Nicht einmal Greta Garbo, die er unsterblich gemacht hat, kann ihm helfen. Und so findet Pabst sich, fast wie ohne eigenes Zutun, in seiner Heimat Österreich wieder, die nun Ostmark heißt. Die barbarische Natur des Regimes spürt die heimgekehrte Familie mit aller Deutlichkeit. Doch der Propagandaminister in Berlin will das Filmgenie haben, er kennt keinen Widerspruch, und er verspricht viel. Während Pabst noch glaubt, dass er dem Werben widerstehen, dass er sich keiner Diktatur als der der Kunst fügen wird, ist er schon den ersten Schritt in die rettungslose Verstrickung gegangen. Daniel Kehlmanns Roman über Kunst und Macht, Schönheit und Barbarei ist ein Triumph. «Lichtspiel» zeigt, was Literatur vermag: durch Erfindung die Wahrheit hervortreten zu lassen.

Германия рубежа XVIII и XIX столетий. Подходит к концу эпоха Просвещения. Двое талантливых мальчишек – барон-аристократ и вундеркинд из бедной крестьянской семьи Александр фон Гумбольдт и Карл Гаусс еще не подозревают о том, что станут великими учеными. Первый – исследователем Земли, объехав почти весь мир, второй – блестящим математиком, лишь изредка покидая родной городок Брауншвейг. После мимолетной встречи в детстве их судьбы расходятся на целую жизнь, неожиданно соединившись в ее конце…

Seinen ersten Roman Beerholms Vorstellung verfasste Daniel Kehlmann während seines Studiums in Wien. Ein Literaturkritiker riet ihm, ihn in der Toilette herunterzuspülen. Seitdem hat er 15 weitere Bücher geschrieben und gilt heute als einer der bedeutendsten deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsautoren. Kehlmann hat sich mit Heinrich Detering zu einem langen Gespräch getroffen. Sie reden über das Spiel mit historischen Figuren, über Geister, die sich in Texte drängeln, über Logik und das Paradoxe, denn: »Einen Drachen muss man dort suchen, wo noch nie einer gesehen wurde.« Kehlmann erzählt von seiner Prägung durch das Theater, von Vorbildern, Schreibgewohnheiten und dem Verfassen des sehr deutschen Romans Tyll in der New York Library. Er spricht über den Umgang mit Kritik, Intelligenz als Vorwurf und das Dasein als »Formalist ohne Seele«. Neben Einblicken in sein Werk zeigt sich hier auch der private Kehlmann, Sohn eines bedeutenden Regisseurs und selbst Vater eines Kindes, das seinen Blick auf die Welt und sein Schreiben verändert hat.

Daniel Kehlmanns vordergründig realistische Texte sind durchzogen von subtilen Brechungen: „Ich fand Literatur immer am faszinierendsten, wenn sie nicht die Regeln der Syntax bricht, sondern die der Wirklichkeit.“ TEXT+KRITIK widmet sich dieser Poetologie des „Gebrochenen Realismus“ ebenso wie Kehlmanns literarischen und wissenschaftlichen Wurzeln.