The writer and essayist Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and now lives in Germany and America. His novel “The Surveying of the World” from 2005 is one of the most well-known books in post-war literature picaresque novel “Tyll” (2017) about the time of the Thirty Years’ War.
SZ: What are you reading right now?
Daniel Kehlmann: George Saunders’ “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain”. And for the second time. It is truly, without exaggeration, the best book on writing I have ever read.
And which book influenced you the most?
“Pale Fire” by Vladimir Nabokov. And of course “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy. There is simply no better novel, there has never been a better one, and there probably won’t be any better either, nothing helps.
What book do you hate but love the author?
“Ada or The Desire”. Nabokov is hugely important to me, but this novel is just unbearable.
How many more novels does humanity need?
Every age needs new novels, so hopefully there will be an infinite number of them.
Have you ever stolen a book, if so which one?
A colleague, Gion Mathias Cavelty, loaned me Lawrence Sutin’s Divine Raids, a biography by Philip K. Dick, many years ago. I never returned them. Somehow it never happened, and every time on the way to Zurich I forgot about it. I hope Gion reads these Southgerman newspaper not too accurate.
A book that is important to you but most others have never heard of?
“Tony & Susan” by Austin Wright. A brilliant novel with such an unspeakably boring and bad title that it’s practically impossible to persuade anyone to read the thing. Only Tom Ford read it and immediately made a good film out of it – but still no comparison to the really brilliant novel.
What book do you keep bragging about without ever reading it?
“Don Quixote”.
Is there a book that you once loved dearly but now find horrifying?
Absolutely everything by Hermann Hesse.
They say you’re into magic. What do magic and writing have to do with each other?
Very much. You would have to write a whole book about it, maybe I’ll do that too. Really good magic is one real Art that is in no way inferior to painting, literature or music. A great magician – there aren’t many of those – can show you that the world is not everything as it is – everything could be different and all impressions are deceptive. You start rethinking everything and looking at everything as if for the first time. That’s what magic does, and so do good books.
Her novel “Measuring the World” (2005) was on the bestseller list for ages New York Times was to read that he was among the world’s most successful books in second place. Did you never want to write a word again after that?
Alternately. Sometimes never a word again, sometimes absolutely a lot. And actually it’s still like that – every day it goes back and forth several times.
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