Fame

by Daniel Kehlmann

Translated from the original German by Carol Brown Janeway

Imagine being famous. Being recognised on the street, adored by people who have never even met you, known the world over, wouldn't that be great? But what if, one day, you got stuck in a country where no one spoke your language and you didn't speak theirs. Where no one knew your face and you had no way of contacting your home and family. How would your fame help you then? What would happen if someone got hold of your mobile phone? If they spoke to your girlfriends, your agent, your director and started making decisions for you. And when no one believed that you were you any more, when you saw a lookalike acting your roles for you, what would you do? And when you realised your magnum opus, like everything else you'd ever written, was drivel, a total waste of time and energy for all concerned, how would you react? Would the thought of the seven million people you knew would buy it and devour every word bring you comfort? Or would your shame only increase? In this delightfully entertaining joy of a book, Daniel Kehlmann throws his characters into all these situations with thrilling, funny and surprising results, showing once again that he is one of his generation's finest European writers.

(From Publisher).

Daniel Kehlmann was born in 1975 in Munich, the son of a director and an actress. He attended a Jesuit school in Vienna, traveled widely, and has won several awards for previous novels and short stories, among them the 2005 Candide Award, the 2006 Kleist Award, and the 2008 Thomas Mann Award. His works have been translated into more than forty languages, and his novel Measuring the World became an instant best seller in several European countries, selling more than 1.5 million copies. Kehlmann lives in Vienna and Berlin.

This novel of nine interconnected stories is a brilliant study of life and literature - playful, witty, and fun to read at the same time.

In his intelligent novel the award-winning author Daniel Kehlmann reflects the fragility of life, questions of identity and the influence of Fame on people's lives, in nine interconnected stories.

Handles one of the most current topics: the paradoxes of celebrity, in a strikingly comic way. 9 stories linked by their subject, a play on the author's identity.