Jostein Gaarder
Jostein Gaarder is an author.
Jostein Gaarder is a Norwegian novelist who writes philosophy for readers who did not sign up for it. Sophie's World, published in 1991, gives a fourteen-year-old a correspondence course in the history of Western thought and then pulls the floor out from under the whole arrangement; it has been translated into sixty languages and has sold more than forty million copies. He writes most often from a child's point of view, on the grounds that children are still surprised the world exists at all, and he likes stories folded inside other stories. The later books repeat the formula with diminishing surprise, but the curiosity is genuine and the teaching is real.
Books (19)
- Slottet i Pyreneene (2008)
- The Orange Girl (2004)
- Ringmasters Daughter (2002)
- Maya (1999)
- El Castillo de Las Ranas (1999)
- Sophie's world (1999)
- Vita Brevis (1998)
- Hello? Is Anybody There? (1998)
- Through a glass, darkly (1998)
- El Libro de los libros (1998)
- The solitaire mystery (1997)
- Der seltene Vogel (1996)
- The Christmas Mystery (1996)
- Le Monde de Sophie (1995)
- El Mundo de Sofia (1994)
- Durch einen Spiegel, in einem dunklen Wort (1993)
- Bibbi Bokkens magiske bibliotek (1993)
- Sofies verden (1991)
- Kabalmysteriet (1990)
Where to start with Jostein Gaarder
Sophie's world is the one, and it works as a real introduction to Western philosophy as well as a trick played on its own heroine; the Norwegian is Sofies verden. The solitaire mystery is the better novel of the two, quieter and stranger, with a story hidden inside a bread roll. The Orange Girl is the short, sad one to read in a sitting. The Christmas Mystery suits children who ask too many questions.