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 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-Napoleonic world.

**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.

Daniel Kehlmanns Roman über einen Filmregisseur im Dritten Reich, über Kunst und Macht, Schönheit und Barbarei ist ein Triumph. Lichtspiel zeigt, was Literatur vermag: durch Erfindung die Wahrheit hervortreten zu lassen. 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.

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…

Zum 50. Geburtstag von Daniel Kehlmann: sein Debüt »Beerholms Vorstellung ergänzt um ein Nachwort des Autors« Die Kraft der Zahlen und der Zauber der Karten, das Schleifen, Dublieren, Falschabzählen, Filieren, Palmieren – Arthur Beerholm, Zögling in einem Schweizer Internat, weiß früh um seine Begabung. Dennoch studiert er Theologie und landet erst über Umwege bei dem bewunderten Meister der Magie Jan van Rode. Mit seiner Hilfe beginnt Arthurs kometenhafter Aufstieg zum Zauberkünstler, zum weitum hofierten Publikumsliebling, der – auf der Höhe seines Ruhms – die Bühne unvermittelt wieder verlässt, weil ihm das Täuschen der Menschen nicht genügt. Daniel Kehlmann war 22 Jahre alt, als 1997 Beerholms Vorstellung erschien. Rausch und Rationalität, Zauber und Wirklichkeit fügen sich darin zu einem frühen Meisterwerk.