Around the end of the 18th century, two young Germans are preparing to measure the world. One, Alexander von Humboldt, traverses jungles and steppes, navigates the Orinoco, tests poisons, measures lice, crawls in caves, conquers volcano summits, and encounters sea monsters and cannibals.

The other, the mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss, cannot live without women, but leaps out of bed on the very first night of his marriage to jot down mathematical equations – and proves in his native town, Göttingen, that space is curved.

Now aged, famous, and somewhat eccentric, they meet in Berlin in 1828 and set in motion the writing of one of the most beautiful novels of recent years. A tremendous literary and commercial success in Germany, The Measure of the World is already being translated into all the languages of the world.

I wholeheartedly recommend Daniel Kehlmann. Genius, observation, and fantastic dialogues!

Marcel Reich-Ranicki