This was billed as a cross between a philosophy overview and a novel. I had a real problem with the novel side of the book: I was uncomfortable with the premise and the way it was handled - a middle-aged man contacts a fourteen year old girl secretly to teach her about philosophy and the mother gets worried but lets her daughter continue to go to this guy's house for hours at a time..it was REALLY creepy ("He sat down and looked into her eyes" creepy!). Then I didn't like the twist (the whole "secret of their existence" thing). Admittedly, I liked (relatively) the philosophy course - but in order to justify it, the author interrupted it with bad/useless dialogue (Sophie saying things like "Really?" or "Then why?"). In all, there were about fifty pages of this seven hundred page book that I enjoyed... ( )

'Wisest is she who knows she does not know.'

Fourteen-year-old Norwegian schoolgirl Sophie Amundsen lives a rather ordinary life in Clover Close but unknown to her she is about to embark on an extraordinary adventure. One day on her way home from school, she discovers two notes in the mailbox addressed to her. On the two notes are written two rather strange questions: Who are you?' and 'Where does the world come from?' But who wrote these letters, and who put them in her mailbox?

The writer turns out to be an enigmatic philosopher called Alberto Knox. In a series of entertaining letters, and then in person, Knox leads Sophie's enquiring mind, along with the reader's, through what is essentially a free correspondence course covering 3000 years of Western Philosophy history ranging from the pre-Socratics to Sartre and Freud.

"It can't be pure chance that created the human eye. Don't you think there is meaning in our being able to see the world around us?"

However, jumbled in with her correspondence from Knox- delivered via Hermes, the dog - Sophie stumbles upon several postcards addressed to someone called Hilde Moeller Knag. The postcards appear to be from Hilde's father, Major Alberto Knag, who is serving in Lebanon with the UN. Hilde shares the same birthday as Sophie – but who is Hilde, and why does she keep finding her postcards?

About halfway through the book we are indeed introduced to Hilde, and the story takes a somewhat unexpected twist.

This is my first Gaarder novel and I must that it has sat on my bookshelf for over a decade often overlooked. Up until the introduction of Hilde I felt like I had made the right decision to leave it there, the first half read like a school lecture and whilst enlightening didn't really grip me. But with this one plot twist my interest became keener. I began to relish its playful plot themes, its mystical fantasy alongside a whole lot of Philosophy, and as a result, finished the second half of the book much quicker than I did the first.

Overall I found 'Sophie's World' a creative, a story within a story with an entertaining writing style and topics that I hadn't contemplated before. Obviously, the world looks a lot different now compared to the early '90s when this was first published, thankfully women's rights have moved on in the most of world an awful lot since, but some of the same problems remain especially in Lebanon and I would be interested to learn what philosophical messages Knox would give us about our warming planet. ( )

This book felt too much like a text book with sill characters than reading for pleasure. For someone who doesn't know anything about philosophy, this could be a great intro book for them, if they enjoy this kind of thing

but, this wasn't my kind of book. I don't want to feel like it's homework. The twists and turns and special surprise sci fi kind of part of this book just wasn't interesting enough to distract from all the preaching and school talk. ( )

This is so strange. It's a primer on Western philosophy for young adults (or anyone who needs it really), and a bizarre novel/thought experiment of a book within a book.
The history of philosophy was easily digestible and really plopped into the text as what it was. No disguising the long history lessons as something more interesting. You really have to suspend your disbelief that a 14 year old would say "can you give me an example?" so many times though.
The story outside of the philosophy lessons was bizarre. Being set in 1990, my birth year, but in Scandinavian, it was fascinating to see how far ahead their society was to ours. The concern for environmental issues was well ahead of us for one. The premise that a 14 year old girl would be meeting in secret with an older man for philosophy lessons and her mom is just like "is he on drugs?" is also mind-boggling.
I'm glad I picked this up but I don't know that I'd recommend it. ( )

wow, i was just expecting a book about philosophy and even like that it would've been around 4.5/5, but the meta element of it (and i will always love meta) made it so much better. ( )