Sophie's World

Sophies' World published in 1991. Originally written in Norwegian, it was translated in 51 languages.

Do you feel the subject of Philosophy as the driest one on Earth?
Do you try to read it but leave soon due to boredom?
But you can't just ignore it because:

• Philosophy is the mother of all sciences.
• It is the root of all the thought provoking material in the world.
• If you want to write well, you have to study it.

           Jostein Gaarder from University of Oslo knew this problem of his students. Being a Norwegian intellectual, he made an exceptional effort to sum up the history of philosophy in the simplest manner.

             Sophie's World is a novel about a fourteen year old girl, who was enticed by an unknown man to study philosophy. In the beginning, he just asked two simple questions from Sophie that who is she and from where the world began. Curious to know more, she started reading the Philosophical material sent from her teacher. He further said,


                                      "THE ONLY  THING WE REQUIRE TO BE GOOD
                                      PHILOSOPHERS IS THE FACULTY OF WONDER. "

            And this wonder leads Sophie to discover the new aspects of life. She herself starts to think as the the philosophers do. The Novel moves in a systematic manner and the author is well aware of the boredom that may occur to the reader due to monotonus concepts of Philosophy. So, he runs a side story too in the Novel about some soldier and his daughter.

            The reader finds himself in a journey along with Sophie and he cannot restrain himself to think analytically. Probably it is the best book I have ever read in my life.

 Some quotes from the novel are:

• Fate :
  … the “fortune-teller” is trying to foresee something that is really quite
  unforeseeable ...

• We can either fool ourselves and the rest of the world by
  pretending that we know all there is to know, or we can shut our eyes to the
  central issues once and for all and abandon  all progress.

• Philosophers will try to ignore highly topical affairs and instead try  to draw people’s attention to what is eternally “true,” eternally “beautiful,” and eternally “good. 

  
 Here are some reviews from some other sources:

• “A page-turner.” —Entertainment Weekly
• “Compelling.” —Los Angeles Times 
• “Involving and often humorous.” —USA Today
  
  

  Download:

  
  You can download the book directly from the link provided below:
  http://bookzz.org/book/923207/90cd4e