Fame by Daniel Kehlmann
In the first of Fame's nine stories, the technician Ebling whose high point of the week is the Wiener Schnitzel on the office canteen menu, at last succumbs to the blandishments of the mobile phone and through an error is assigned the number of the actor Ralf Tanner. Soon he is taking Tanner's calls, making his decisions and talking to his girlfriends without any responsibility - with disastrous consequences. Other characters in Fame are the writers Leo Richter and the mortally ill Rosalie; we also see numerous staff of the mobile phone business, and even a thinly veiled version of a famous feelgood writer in his Rio Penthouse, with a gun in his mouth as he contemplates his valueless oeuvre, a title of which appears irritatingly in each chapter to console or infuriate. The main theme of the novel is switching identity amidst the effects of modern changing technology and the confusing game of deception played between reality and fiction. The characters fear obscurity, they dream of recognition and of being the inspiration for famous stories...
'Who would have thought contemporary Central European literature could be so fun and so funny? Daniel Kehlmann is whoThe young Austrian prodigy has given us a real beauty of a book, farcical, satiric, melancholic, and humane. Modern fame may have been invented in America, but nobody has dramatized its paradoxes and heartbreaks more entertainingly than the European Kehlmann does here' Jonathan Franzen. 'Riffs echo through this playful, perplexing landscape' Times.
Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and moved to Vienna in 1981, where he studied philosophy and literature at university. Fame is his sixth novel.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781849163767 |
| ISBN 10 | 1849163766 |
| Title | Fame |
| Author | Daniel Kehlmann |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Quercus Publishing |
| Year published | 2010-09-02 |
| Number of pages | 304 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |