The latest addition to my website is Daniel Kehlmann‘s F, a superb new novel from Kehlmann about family, fate, faking and forgery and various other F-words (but, no, not that one). It concerns two twins, Iwan and Eric, their half-brother, Martin, and their father, Arthur. The twins only meet Martin for the first time when they are thirteen and, soon after that, Arthur disappears to become a famous but Pynchon/Salinger-like reclusive novelist. Martin grows up to be a priest who does not believe in God but who does eat a lot and is an expert Rubik’s cube player, Eric becomes a financier whose initial success fades even before the European financial crash and who may be facing criminal charges, while Iwan wants to be a painter but ends up a forger. Kehlmann tells us superb story about Germany in the early part of this century but also a story about family and authenticity and people fighting their demons and how we struggle with life. In my view it is a far superior novel to his big success Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the World). Fortunately, though not yet available in English, it surely will be soon.