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German novel starring Carl Gauss outsells Harry Potter and Da Vinci Code

books.guardian.co.uk — Gripped? You will be. In fact, Measuring the World has proved nothing less than a literary sensation. Since it was published last September, the novel has sold more than 600,000 copies in Germany, knocking JK Rowling and Dan Brown off the top of the best-seller list.

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  • FlyingLlama, on 10/12/2007, -16/+5WTF happened at yesterday's maintenace?!

    19 diggs
    1 day old

    And front page??

    If something happened, please, Kevin, fix it. The front page is being spammed with stories at only 15 diggs.... :(
  • FlyingLlama, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Related to the story itself:

    Seems like an excellent book. Has anyone here read it? Is it better in original German or it's English translation?
  • friend18, on 10/12/2007, -25/+1I'm not a Harry Potter fan. Seems generic and commercail to me. I've never read The Da Vinci code so I can't comment about that.
    • jakewaage, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Wow, how very insightful and completely and utterly irrelevant to the topic, thanks!

      Anyway, the story sounds quite interesting to me, I'll probably pick up a copy - Amazon says November 7th for a US release.
  • mickt, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Sounds a bit like an Italo Calvino novel:

    "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.

    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."
  • shutdown, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Better than Potter AND the Da Vinci Code??? Wow, talk about damning with faint praise.
  • Antaeus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5The Bible is still kicking butt in the sales charts though.
    • answer42, on 10/12/2007, -8/+7The Bible: the greatest work of fiction ever!

      It's even better than Harry Potter and the DaVinci Code!

      Its a bit implausible, though. The main character changes his personality entirely going into the second book. Its pretty unoriginal, too, borrowing heavily from Plato, Zaroastrianism, and Greek mythology.

      Oh well, the authors were probably just looking to sell a bunch of copies on shock value (the scene with the slaughtering of the Sodomites was pretty horrifying, along with countless others).
  • bennybertow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Anyway: The book is called "Die Vermessung der Welt" from Daniel Kehlmann. The article didn't even mention the book's title...
    • bash, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It...actually does. "Measuring the World" is the title. I'm assuming that's the translation of the German title.
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