Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and lives in Berlin and New York. His novels and plays have won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Welt Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. His novel Measuring the World was translated into more than forty languages and is one of the biggest successes in post-war German literature. He is currently a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library.