Stories

Son of Austrian television director Michael Kehlmann, originally from Vienna. Daniel's grandfather, Eduard Kehlmann, was an Austrian expressionist writer. At the age of six he returned to his father's hometown. He studied at the University of Vienna, writing his dissertation on the concept of the sublime in Kant.

He published his first novel in 1997 while still a student. Since his student years he has collaborated with major German-language newspapers — Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He lectures on poetics at universities in Germany. He lives in Berlin and Vienna.

He was influenced by Latin American magical realism and the fantastic prose of the Prague School writers (Kubin, Perutz). In the first decade of the 21st century he gained recognition as a "wunderkind" and the great hope of German literature.

Member of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature and the German Academy of Language and Literature. Recipient of the "Candide" Prize (2005), the Kleist Prize, the Heimito von Doderer Prize, the Konrad Adenauer Society Prize (all 2006), the Welt newspaper prize (2007), the Thomas Mann Prize (2008), and other awards.