Measuring the World
Ratings21
Average rating3.5
The young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann conjures a brilliant and gently comic novel from the lives of two geniuses of the Enlightenment. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Hum-boldt, negotiates savanna and jungle, travels down the Orinoco, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores every hole in the ground. The other, the barely socialized mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss, does not even need to leave his home in Gottingen to prove that space is curved. He can run prime numbers in his head. He cannot imagine a life without women, yet he jumps out of bed on his wedding night to jot down a mathematical formula. Von Humboldt is known to history as the Second Columbus. Gauss is recognized as the greatest mathematical brain since Newton. Terrifyingly famous and more than eccentric in their old age, the two meet in Berlin in 1828. Gauss has hardly climbed out of his carriage before both men are embroiled in the political turmoil sweeping through Germany after Napoleon's fall.Already a huge best seller in Germany, Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene.From the Hardcover edition.
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Two self-absorbed men set out on individual scientific quests, one mathematical and one botanical/cartographical. They both accomplish scientific things, are rude and selfish as often as possible, and are always tedious. In fact, they come off as completely flat, unreal characters, a feeling that is heightened by the author's blunt and choppy writing style and the almost complete lack of dialog throughout the book.
The inability of Humboldt and Gauss to understand the people around them - and their complete interest in trying - made me completely uninterested in finding out what happens to them. Book tossed aside in supreme irritation.
I did not know much about the lives of Von Humboldt and Gauss. I really enjoyed this unusual romp.
Humorvoll, inspirierend und sprachlich schön. Der Konjunktiv dieses Buches gibt der Erzählung einen speziellen Charakter und prägt gleichsam die humorvolle und leichtfüßige Note des Buches. Ich bewundere die sprachliche Fähigkeit des Autors und will sogleich selbst einen derartigen Stil erlernen. Die Figuren sind ebenfalls in hohem Maße inspirierend: Einen Genius (oder hier zwei) am Werke zu sehen führt stets dazu, dass man sich auch als Leser und lebender und suchender Mensch hinangezogen fühlt zu größeren Höhen seiner selbst.
