Luke Davies

Altitude Sickness

You Should Have Left

By

riverrun 111pp £10 order from our bookshop

Daniel Kehlmann has a knack for making light work of monumental themes. In 2005 he made a name for himself with his unlikely bestseller Measuring the World, a fictionalised account of the lives of two 19th-century German scientists. It’s a novel that tackles some weighty – potentially leaden – subjects, from the pursuit of knowledge to the building of nations. And yet in Kehlmann’s hands, these issues become a rich source of levity and wit. 

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • Tarantino's latest film is 'a fairy tale about Hollywood, where fantasy is an industrial product and the boulevards… ,
    • 'I don’t think we’re here on Earth to be Happy. I think we’re here on Earth to help God. I am a messianic writer'.… ,
    • 'Darley’s book is not a mad dash through this most compelling and complex of English counties. Nor is it another ti… ,
    • 'Moser’s book offers such a gripping account of a profoundly damaged human being, trapped in a cycle of repetition,… ,
    • 'Ideas that I’d thought were set down in full continue to smoulder ... this book is only a snapshot of some larger… ,
    • 'Full of invention which, at its most pedestrian, is eminently Victorian, and at its most unrestrained wildly imagi… ,
    • 'What in other hands could have been a dry, pedantic account of Christianity’s birth and evolution becomes in Holla… ,
    Follow Us