Sophie's World
A Novel About the History of Philosophy
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4.3 • 111 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print.
One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This long, dense novel, a bestseller in the author's native Norway, offers a summary history of philosophy embedded in a philosophical mystery disguised as a children's book-but only sophisticated young adults would be remotely interested. Sophie Amundsen is about to turn 15 when she receives a letter from one Alberto Knox, a philosopher who undertakes to educate her in his craft. Sections in which we read the text of Knox's lessons to Sophie about the pre-Socratics, Plato and St. Augustine alternate with those in which we find out about Sophie's life with her well-meaning mother. Soon, though, Sophie begins receiving other, stranger missives addressed to one Hilde Moller Knag from her absent father, Albert. As Alberto Knox's lessons approach this century, he and Sophie come to suspect that they are merely characters in a novel written by Albert for his daughter. Teacher and pupil hatch a plot to understand and possibly escape from their situation; and from there, matters get only weirder. Norwegian philosophy professor Gaarder's notion of making a history of philosophy accessible is a good one. Unfortunately, it's occasionally undermined by the dry language he uses to describe the works of various thinkers and by an idiosyncratic bias that gives one paragraph to Nietzsche but dozens to Sartre, breezing right by Wittgenstein and the most influential philosophy of this century, logical positivism. Many readers, regardless of their age, may be tempted to skip over the lessons, which aren't well integrated with the more interesting and unusual metafictional story line. Author tour.
Customer Reviews
Amazing read
This is one of my favorite books ever. I read in for my senior AP English class and it just blew my mind. Everybody loved it just as much as I did. Gaarder gives his readers the general time line of philosophy and applies/demonstrates these philosophies through the plot. I wish there was a way that my hard copy could come with a digital download of this book, like those blu ray movies, so that I could have this book on my iPhone and read it whenever I can't have my book.
An Excellent Start
This book was chosen by my book club group (a group of four, grade 7 girls). Not only were they engaged in the conversations but were inspired to think more deeply about their world, their choices, and their influences. Furthermore, the rhetorical choices made in the story was masterful, at times. The author was clever enough to be able to write some of the logic and the concepts into the rhetoric, further illustrating the ideologies.
As an English teacher, I am so happy to have been given such a nice text to work with and such an engaging text to inspire my students with.
Missing!
Many chapters are missing from this download! Ruined a good book