Read and discuss works by contemporary German authors in this new series hosted by the Goethe-Institut. All books can be read in recent English translation or in the German original; discussion will be in English. Led by local German professor
Amanda Sheffer (The Catholic University of America), this book club focuses on contemporary fiction and will explore experiences and thoughts about the text.
The series begins with one of the most widely-read contemporary German novels, Daniel Kehlmann's
Measuring the World (Die Vermessung der Welt). It has sold more than 3 million copies in Germany and more than 6 million worldwide, and been translated into over 40 languages. The novel tells the story of two young Germans in the eighteenth century who set out to measure the world. The aristocratic naturalist Alexander von Humboldt does not flinch from any adventure: He 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. In contrast, 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-Napoleon world.
Daniel Kehlmann (b. 1975, Munich) is an Austrian-German author. He spent his first years in Munich before moving to Vienna, where he studied philosophy and German. He has been a lecturer at many German universities, and was a guest professor in the German department at New York University. Kehlmann wrote his dissertation on Kant (who also appears in the novel).
Measuring the World became a full-length film in 2012.
In cooperation with the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at The Catholic University of America.
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