Sophie's World - a novel by Jostein Gaarder

Hey, do you know the little girl named Sophie?? She is 14 years old. Lives in Norway. One day she came home and get two strange letter. Who wrote to her? Read the greatest novel to find out the mystery. I recently read the novel and loved it. Sophie has her own world where she is a brave girl to know about lots of facts in this world.

It is a world famous novel by Jostein Gaarder (a former high school philosophy teacher in Norway), published in 1991.  In the original Norwegian it is called Sofies verden. The novel was originally written in Norwegian, but because of popularity it has since been translated into English and many other languages. It sold more than 30 million copies and is one of the most successful Norwegian novels outside of Norway.


This book contains a novel mantra for those days when the world gets in your face. Gaarder takes you on a journey from Socrates to Sartre, and there is an eerie subplot involving some puzzling postcards sent to Sophie but addressed to a mystery girl exactly her age.

The novel starts with a young girl named Sophie Amundsen who is 14-year-old and lives in Norway in the year 1990. She lives with her mother. Her father is a captain of an oil tanker, and is away for most of the year. She has some pets such as a cat named Sherekan,  goldfish, a tortoise, two budgerigars.

The story begins when we see that Sophie receiving two anonymous messages in her mailbox (the first asking, "Who are you?", the second asking, "Where does the world come from?") and a post card addressed to 'Hilde Møller Knag, c/o Sophie Amundsen'. Shortly afterwards, she receives a packet of papers, part of a correspondence course in philosophy. She became nervous to get those things. She starts thinking a lot about different things. She read those papers of philosophy course and get addicted on them. She starts waits for those papers. Her mother noticed some strange behavior about Sophie and asked her but Sophie hides them to her. Sophie's detective-like quest to learn the other girl's identity is a metaphor for figuring out her own place in the world and makes what could have been too academic a book into a page turner.

The story runs with these mysterious communications and Sophie becomes the student of a fifty-year-old philosopher, Alberto Knox. At first, he is completely anonymous to Sophie, but he later reveals more and more about himself. The papers and the packet both turn out to be from him, but the post card is not; it is addressed from someone called Albert Knag, who is a major in a United Nations peacekeeping unit stationed in Lebanon.

Then we find that Alberto teaches her about the history of philosophy. Sophie gets a substantive and understandable review from the Pre-Socratics to Jean-Paul Sartre. Then along with the philosophy lessons, Sophie and Alberto try to outwit the mysterious Albert Knag, who appears to have God-like powers, which Alberto finds quite troubling.

Eventually Sophie learns about medieval philosophy while being lectured by Alberto, dressed as a monk, in an ancient church, and she learns about Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in a French café. Various philosophical questions and methods of reasoning are put before Sophie, as she attempts to work them out on her own. Many of Knox's philosophic packets to her are preluded by more short questions, such as "Why is Lego the most ingenious toy in the world?"

After that Alberto takes Sophie from the Hellenistic civilization to the rise of Christianity and its interaction with Ancient Greek thought on to the Middle Ages. Over the course of the book, he covers the Renaissance, Baroque, Enlightenment and Romantic periods, with the philosophies that stemmed from them.

Later, mixed in with the philosophy lessons is a plot rather more akin to normal teenage novels, in which Sophie interacts with her mother and her friend Joanna. This is not the focus of the story but simply serves to move the plot along. After the introduction to George Berkeley, the perspective of the novel shifts to the mysterious Hilde. Sophie and Alberto's entire world is revealed to be a literary construction by Albert Knag as a present for his daughter, Hilde, on her 15th birthday on June 15.

The novel continues with Hilde's story as a framing device for Sophie's story, but the stories intertwine as Hilde's understanding of philosophy grows alongside Sophie's understanding. As Albert Knag continues to meddle with Sophie's life, Alberto helps her fight back by teaching her everything he knows about philosophy. That, he explains, is the only way to understand her world. Meanwhile, Alberto's lessons allow Hilde to develop her own understanding of Sophie's world and use her knowledge against her father for exercising too much power over Sophie's world. This is laced with events that appear to be scientifically impossible, such as Sophie seeing her reflection in a mirror wink with both eyes her or actually seeing Socrates and Plato. Being a book based on philosophy, however, it promises, and delivers, an explanation for everything in the end, when Sophie and Alberto Knox escape from Albert Knag.

So,grab the greatest amazing book and pleasure yourself.