Book Bearings
Sophie's World
- 518 pages · about 9 hours
- First published 1991
- 50 editions
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1 About this book
Sophie Amundsen is a fourteen-year-old girl living in Norway. One day she finds two notes in her mailbox, each with a single question: Who are you? Where does the world come from? More envelopes follow, and soon she is the pupil of a mysterious philosopher, Alberto Knox, who leads her through the history of Western philosophy from the ancient Greeks to the twentieth century. At the same time, postcards keep arriving for a girl named Hilde, whom Sophie has never met, and working out who Hilde is becomes a puzzle of its own. Jostein Gaarder's novel was first published in Norwegian in 1991.
- Philosophy
- Philosophy and ethics
- Didactic fiction
- Children's fiction
- Conduct of life
2 What to expect
A novel that is also a beginner's course in the history of Western philosophy: a Norwegian teenager receives lessons from a mysterious teacher, from Socrates to Sartre. The lessons take up most of the book, clear and patient, and around them runs a mystery about another girl that becomes a philosophical puzzle of its own. It is long and can feel like a textbook in places, and the story grows stranger and more playful as it goes.
Good for readers who want: an introduction to philosophy, a mystery with ideas, and a thoughtful read.
3 About Jostein Gaarder
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 Similar books
- Candide by Voltaire
- Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
- Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
- The Fall by Albert Camus