Measuring the World. Daniel Kehlmann

A brilliant, ironic, insightful and sad novel by Daniel Kehlmann, the most famous modern German-language writer.

At the end of the 18th century, two young Germans are absolutely convinced that the time has come to measure our world. But these young men are not just a couple of young people who believe in science, but two future geniuses of the Age of Enlightenment. One of them - the Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Humboldt - sets off on a long journey, crossing savannas and slogging through jungles, descending the Orinoco River, trying poisons, climbing the highest mountain and exploring literally everything that comes his way. The other - the mathematician and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss - does not even have to leave his home in Göttingen to prove that space has curvature. Humboldt later went down in history as the second Columbus, Gauss was recognized as the greatest mathematical mind of his era. Eccentric and fantastically popular in Europe, the two finally met in Berlin in 1828 - and immediately found themselves in the midst of the political turmoil that had gripped Germany since the fall of Napoleon.

The novel "Measurement of the World", first published in 2005, remains the world's best-selling modern German-language book. It has been translated into 46 languages ​​and was adapted into a film in 2012 by director Detlef Buch.