[1] His novel Die Vermessung der Welt (translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway as Measuring the World, 2006) is the best selling book in the German language since Patrick Süskind's Perfume was released in 1985.

Kehlmann's play The Mentor, translated by Christopher Hampton, opened at Theatre Royal, Bath, in April 2017 starring F. Murray Abraham and transferred to the London West End in July 2017.

[6] Kehlmann's highly praised novel Tyll (2017), which sold more than 600,000 copies in German alone[7] and was published in the US in February 2020,[8] is currently being adapted into a TV series for Netflix by the makers of Dark.

Kehlmann's play Die Reise der Verlorenen was adapted for BBC radio by Tom Stoppard under the title The Voyage of the St. Louis.

He adapted Thomas Mann's novel Confessions of Felix Krull Confidence Man for an upcoming movie.