There was quite a hype about this book and it's author a few years ago and so I was inevitably prejudiced when I opened it.

What I appreciate about this book is its sense of humor (the dialog with Kant is hilarious) and the idea to deliberately avoid direct speech in order to make the language resemble rather a travel report than a novel. This certainly adds to the athmosphere, especially of the Humboldt chapters.

At the same time I find it hard to follow those people, who read this book as a character study or biography of either Humboldt or Gauß. Not only does the author declare in interviews that he deliberately took some liberties when it comes to historical accuracy, but there is also a paragraph in the book, that I take to be an ironical reference to this matter. In that paragraph Kehlmann lets Gauß display his disgust for novels, that get lost in a sea of lies, as the author attaches his own whim to the names of historical figures ("[...] Romane, die sich in Lügenmärchen verlören, weil der Verfasser seine Flausen an die Namen geschichtlicher Personen binde" (p. 221)).

I must confess, that any deeper layers of the book, like the assumed statement on "German-ness" or any deeper philosophical implications remained hidden to me. Where the reference to some philosophical thought was done openly (as the reference to [a:La Mettrie|457727|Julien Offray de La Mettrie|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1233199332p2/457727.jpg]'s attempt of a pure mechanistic explanation of mental processes) it seemed to me rather random.

Given the degree to which this book was praised in the media, I don't know if it was unwillingness or mere ignorance on my part that made me read this apparently profound piece of literature merely as a mediocre but still enjoyable historical fiction.