Abstract
ABSTRACT Daniel Kehlmann's best selling novel Measuring the World has been widely discussed as an example of the recent surge in German travel writing and as a historical novel. This article suggests understanding the book as an exploration of the poetics of fiction writing in opposition to the ‘naïve realism’ (Kehlmann) that dominated German literature after 1945. Through a densely woven web of literary references, from Goethe to South America's magic realism, from Walter Benjamin to E. L. Doctorow and Jonathan Franzen, the novel reaches out to literary traditions far beyond the common framework of German postwar writing. Ultimately, it should be perceived as a narrative that explores or measures the world of literature.
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