“Filling the blank page is agony.” The German literary “wunderkind” Daniel Kehlmann, author of the international bestseller ‘Measuring the World’, puts it thus clearly in this interview on the difficult beginning of a novel.
“There is something deeply satisfying about physically filling a blank page with lines of your writing.” Though Kehlmann prefers the process of rewriting and reshaping, he still acknowledges the pleasure he derives from having overcome the blank page.
Daniel Kehlmann (b. 1975) is a German author, who was born in Munich, Germany and raised in Austria. He has written international bestsellers such as ’Me and Kaminski’ from 2003 (’Ich und Kaminski’) and ’Measuring the World’ from 2006 (‘Die Vermessung der Welt’) for which he was awarded the Heimito von Doderer Prize. The latter book furthermore sold around 3 million copies in Germany alone and roughly twice that worldwide, having been translated into more than 40 languages and made into a film in 2012. Moreover, Kehlmann’s novels are on the school syllabus in Germany.
Daniel Kehlmann was interviewed by Kasper Bech Dyg in connection to the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark in August 2014.
Camera: Nikolaj Jungersen and Jeppe Svendsen
Produced and edited by: Kasper Bech Dyg
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2015
Supported by Nordea-fonden
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