Looking in her mailbox one day, a fourteen-year-old Norwegian schoolgirl called Sophie Amundsen finds two surprising pieces of paper. On them are written the questions: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?"
The writer is an enigmatic philosopher called Alberto Knox, and his two teasing questions are the beginning of an extraordinary tour through the history of Western Philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Sartre. In a series of brilliantly entertaining letters, and then in person. Alberto Knox opens Sophie's enquiring mind to the fundamental questions that philosophers have been asking since the dawn of civilisation.
'Remarkable... What Jostein Gaarder has managed to do is to condense 3,000 years of thought into 400 pages: to some extremely complicated arguments without trivialising them... Sophie's World is an extraordinary achievement' Sunday Times
'Sophie's World is set to become a unique popular classic: a wonderfully engaging mystery story that also forms a completely accessible and lucid introduction to philosophy and philosophers' The Times
The writer is an enigmatic philosopher called Alberto Knox, and his two teasing questions are the beginning of an extraordinary tour through the history of Western Philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Sartre. In a series of brilliantly entertaining letters, and then in person. Alberto Knox opens Sophie's enquiring mind to the fundamental questions that philosophers have been asking since the dawn of civilisation.
'Remarkable... What Jostein Gaarder has managed to do is to condense 3,000 years of thought into 400 pages: to some extremely complicated arguments without trivialising them... Sophie's World is an extraordinary achievement' Sunday Times
'Sophie's World is set to become a unique popular classic: a wonderfully engaging mystery story that also forms a completely accessible and lucid introduction to philosophy and philosophers' The Times