Measuring the World

[jd]

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1823905,00.html

Sounds like something p-listers would dig

"At first glance the plot seems unpromising. At the end of the 18th
century two brilliant young Germans attempt to measure the world. One
of them is Alexander von Humboldt, whose journeys in South America see
him hack through the jungle, crawl into caves and count lice on the
natives.

The other is Carl Friedrich Gauss, an astronomer and mathematician,
who cannot live without women, but who leaps out of bed on his wedding
night to note a formula. From his home in Göttingen, Gauss discovers
that space is bent.

	
Unlikely bestseller heralds the return of lightness and humour to
German literature

The two men - old, famous and a bit odd - meet each other in Berlin in
1828. No sooner has Gauss emerged from his carriage, however, than he
finds himself caught up in the confusion of Germany after the fall of
Napoleon.

...

The book, which also features a senile Immanuel Kant, is the most
successful German novel since Patrick Susskind's Perfume two decades
ago."

I've not read Perfume but my girlfriend has, and she seemed to like it
quite a bit.  Looks like it will be out in the US in November.  The
mentions of Rowling and Brown make me nervous that it's just going to
be another DaVinci-code esque cesspool, but then again I hear that
Christa Wolf's In the Flesh did very well in Germany (which is one of
the reasons Godine printed it here in America - it's a very good
little novella).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375424466/sr=8-1/qid=1153943533/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1730195-8824763?ie=UTF8

After reading In the Flesh and hearing about that Flemish writer that
was mentioned awhile back, I'm really starting to wonder just how much
amazing literature we're missing in the US simply because it isn't
being translated.