Omri Boehm is an associate professor and the chair of the Department of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. He teaches and writes on early modern philosophy and philosophy of religion, with a specific focus on Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant. His books include The Binding of Isaac: A Religious Model of Disobedience (2007), Kant’s Critique of Spinoza (2014), and Haifa Re-public: A Democratic Future for Israel (2021). He was awarded the 2023 Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding for his most recent book, Radikaler Universalismus: Jenseits von Identität (“Radical Universalism: Beyond Identity”). His writing has appeared in Die Zeit, The New York Times, Washington Post, and Haaretz.

Daniel Kehlmann is a German-language novelist and playwright. Born in Munich in 1975, Kehlmann’s 2005 novel Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the World) has become one of the most successful German novels in the postwar period. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages. In 2020, Kehlmann’s novel Tyll was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. He has been awarded the Candide Prize, the Per Olov Enquist Prize, the Thomas Mann Prize, and the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize. In 2013, Kehlmann collaborated with Jon-athan Franzen on his essay collection The Kraus Project, a translation of works by the Austrian satirist Karl Kraus. His plays The Mentor (2014) and Christmas Eve (2017) have been performed at the West End Theater in London and the Theater Royal in Bath. He has held the Eberhard Berent Chair at New York University and has been a fellow-in-residence at the New York Public Library Center for Writers and Scholars. He is a member of the German Academy for Language and Literature. His newest novel is Lichtspiel (2023).