De wereld van Sofie

by Jostein Gaarder

One day Sophie comes home from school to find two questions in her mail: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?"

Before she knows it, she is enrolled in a correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre and beyond, with a mysterious philosopher. But Sophie is receiving a separate batch of equally unusual letters. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up in Sophie's world?

To unravel this riddle, Sophie must make use of the philosophy she is learning. But the truth is far more complicated than she could have imagined...

Genres: Philosophy, Fiction, Classics, Young Adult, Fantasy, Novels, Literature

668 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Jostein Gaarder is a Norwegian intellectual and author of several novels, short stories, and children's books. Gaarder often writes from the perspective of children, exploring their sense of wonder about the world. He often uses meta-fiction in his works, writing stories within stories.

Gaarder was born into a pedagogical family. His best known work is the novel Sophie's World, subtitled "A Novel about the History of Philosophy." This popular work has been translated into fifty-three languages; there are over thirty million copies in print, with three million copies sold in Germany alone.

In 1997, he established the Sophie Prize together with his wife Siri Dannevig. This prize is an international environment and development prize (USD 100,000 = 77,000 €), awarded annually. It is named after the novel.