Writer and literary translator Daniel Kehlmann was born in 1972 in Germany. He studied philosophy and literature in Berlin, where he also worked as a reporter for German television. In 2001 he became a journalist for the German newspaper Die Zeit. Kehlmann has written several novels, among them The Guignol Game, The Death of Virgil, and The Son Also Rises
His translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2009. His novel A Splendid Conspiracy was published in English in 2016 and became a New York Times bestseller. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the German Book Prize.
Nobody, said Humboldt, had a destiny. One simply decided to feign one until one came to believe in it oneself. But so many things didn't fit in with it, one had to really force oneself.Daniel Kehlmann
It was both odd and unjust, a real example of pitiful arbitrariness of existance, that you were born into a particular time & held prisoner there whether you wanted it or not. It gave you an indecent advantage over the past and made you a clown vis-a-vis the future.Daniel Kehlmann
