Daniel Kehlmann

Prussian aristocrat Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was an indefatigable naturalist and geographer, the first to describe South and Central America scientifically. Carl Gauss (1777-1855) was a mathematician and physicist of genius whose work in number theory, differential geometry and magnetism shaped those fields …

A man buys a mobile phone and starts receiving calls intended for someone else. After some initial hesitation, he begins to play with his new identity. From one day to the next, an actor's phone falls dead silent, as though someone had stolen his life. A writer takes a pair of trips with a woman whose worst fear is to …