It was both odd and unjust...a real example of the pitiful arbitrariness of existence, that you were born into a particular time and 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, in 'Measuring the World' (hat-tip: Benjamin Cohen)
More like this
Read these in the past two months. I don't know if I'll get to review them properly. Still, wanted to share a few words about them while the mind is drunk with a heady concoction of ideas and stories.
"And each generation, full of itself,/ continues to think/ that it lives at the summit of history" -- so ends Affonso Romano de Sant' Anna's poem "Letter to the Dead" (as posted here last year).
Measuring the world is a novel by the young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann who has been hailed as one of the most promising new generation of writers.
The July issue of the newsletter that I write to keep you informed of The Scientific Indian website is out today. If you haven't subscribed yet, you can subscribe and also read the previous issues at TheScian.com.