This book just doesn't keep up with other critical narratives about the art world like 'The Italian Teacher' or - the gold standard in this respect - 'The Map and the Territory'.ītw: I had a good laugh when I found out that in the movie version, Zöllner is played by Daniel Brühl, who clearly is the Daniel Kehlmann of German cinema! :-) Here's the trailer. Still, what this author does really well is describing scenes and moods generally, the writing is not bad, but it's not particularly bold, daring or innovative. It's a little like listening to someone who deems himself to be very distinguished, which is of course one of the worst ways of being a brute - and while this is intentional regarding the character of Zöllner, it expands way beyond that to the set-up of the whole text: 'Hahaha, look how silly these people are - isn't it great that we see through this charade?' This attitude robs the story of any urgency, and leaves out any deeper implications or even pain that might come with the commodification of art. Still, the themes Kehlmann negotiates are very placative and the humour would clearly be more piercing if it was employed more subtly. Zöllner, the critic, is a pretty insufferable stock character, while Kaminski is more interesting and manipulative. In 'Me and Kaminski', Kehlmann discusses cynicism and capitalist dynamics in the art world, focusing on a young, ambitious and unscrupulous art critic who aims to write the biography of the (now) blind and aging painter Kaminski, in the hopes that the latter will pass away soon so people's interest in his work might surge up again. Rosa Pilar Blanco translated the book into Spanish.Okay, no one can claim I didn't really, really try to like Kehlmann's work, and of course this guy is talented and knows how to write, but alas, I simply do not care for most of his books (with the exception of 'Tyll', which is pretty great). The English translation is by Carol Brown Janeway (November 2006). Ī film version directed by Detlev Buck was released in 2012. The book was a bestseller by 2012 it had sold more than 2.3 million copies in Germany alone. One subplot fictionalises the conflict between Gauss and his son Eugene while Eugene wanted to become a linguist, his father decreed that he study law. The novel re-imagines the lives of German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and German geographer Alexander von Humboldt-who was accompanied on his journeys by French explorer Aimé Bonpland-and their many groundbreaking ways of taking the world's measure, as well as Humboldt's and Bonpland's travels in America and their meeting in 1828. Measuring the World ( German: Die Vermessung der Welt) is a novel by Austrian author Daniel Kehlmann, published in 2005 by Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek.

Daniel kehlmann goodreads