Born in Oslo in 1952, Jostein Gaarder has a
degree from the University of Oslo in Scandinavian languages (Norwegian),
the history of ideas and the history of religion. He taught
philosophy and history for many years before becoming a
full-time writer of books for children, young people and adults.
Characteristic of Gaarder's authorship are both his sense of
wonderment and his curiosity about the meaning of life and the
many puzzles it poses.
With unbridled enthusiasm and a storyteller's delight, Gaarder
challenges conventional wisdom and ideas. Ever-questioning in
his exploration of the cultural heritage of the West, he never
ceases to probe its inner coherence and connecting principles.
His wholehearted engagement encourages his readers to take an
interest in philosophy by posing central questions about
ourselves and our place in the universe. Before making his debut
as a fiction writer with Diagnosen og andre noveller (The
Diagnosis and Other Short Stories) in 1986, he had already
written a number of textbooks of religion and philosophy. Not a
few of Jostein Gaarder's books have been translated into other
languages, but his real international breakthrough came in 1991
with publication of Sofies verden (Sophie's World). Not
only has Sofies verden been translated into close on
fifty languages, it has also been made into a film, a musical
and a TV series, as well as a stage play and board game.
Gaarder's books have earned him a wide range of literary awards,
both Norwegian and international.
In 1997 Jostein Gaarder creates a Foundation and a price, the
Sophie Price to promote and reward those who work for a "better
world", in particular with the problems of development
and ecology.
Appelsinpiken
TheOrange Maid
The Orange Maid is Jostein Gaarders first teenage novel
for ten years. It will be published simultaneously in several
countries this autumn.
By writing The Orange Maid Jostein Gaarder has favoured
us with a most beautiful love story. This is a life-affirming
book about a quest for the one great love, and about having the
courage to choose lifes more arduous paths.
The Orange Maid tells the story of Georg, a
fifteen-year-old in the first flush of young love, with a mother
who is an art teacher and a cool stepfather who serves with the
Serious Crime Squad. Georg is a perfectly ordinary boy - until
the day he receives a letter from his father, who died when
Georg was four. Other than a few snapshots in an album and a
couple of video clips, Georg has no clear memory of his father.
In the letter, his father tells Georg about his love for the
mysterious Orange Maid and confronts him with a life-and-death
question. In an attempt to answer this question, and with his
fathers help, Georg writes a book - a book that transcends the
boundaries of time and death
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Sirkusdirektørens datter (2001)
The Ringmaster's Daughter
A tautly written satire centred on man's follies and enduring
vanity, this book further attests to Jostein Gaarder's command
of baffling, cunningly contrived intrigues that lend themselves
to a wide range of interpretations. This time the protagonist is
Petter, a strange, friendless child who prefers his own company
and his own world of make-believe. Even when he grows up his
imagination continues to run riot, but he cannot bear the
thought of publishing the stories he writes under his own name.
He abhors publicity and being made a fuss of. This prompts him
to launch Author Aid, a scheme designed to provide stories for
authors suffering from writer's block. Though highly successful
at first, it soon proves to be a death-trap ....
An audacious book, this is a tautly constructed satire on human
folly and enduring vanity.
Maya (1999)
How can two lovers be reconciled to a lost eternity? Frank, a
Norwegian evolutionary biologist, is ensconced in a hotel room
in Madrid, where he is writing a letter to his estranged wife,
Vera, to tell her of his meeting with a peculiar Spanish couple,
Ana and José. To make Vera understand how much this encounter
has meant to him, he has to begin by telling her of the time he
spent on Taveuni in the Fiji Islands in January 1998. The story
really begins with the Big Bang, when the universe was created,
but it begins also with what Vera wrote to Frank on a postcard
from Barcelona in 1992. Equally surely, the story begins on the
quayside in Cádiz one winter day in 1790, when a five-year-old
boy sells a pack of cards to a German sailor. It may also be
said that the story begins when John loses Sheila and is no
longer able to write. Gaarder asks himself how it can take four
billion years to create a human being but only a few seconds to
die. How can people possibly reconcile themselves to the thought
that life will one day come to an end? He also wonders whether
the process of evolution that culminated in human consciousness
was purely a matter of chance. Maya is the story of Adam's lack
of wonderment at his own existence.
Vita Brevis (1996)
Floria Aemilias brev til Aurel Augustin
Floria Aemilia's letters to Aurelius Augustinus
In Buenos Aires the author comes across a bundle of letters
written in Latin. They prove to be from Floria Aemilia to the
father of the Christian Church, Aurelius Augustinus (St
Augustine), in which she reminds him of their onetime love for
each other, which he rejected in favour of a religious life.
This is a love story from the fourth century, an erotic tragedy
centred on celibacy and submission to God. But it may also be
read as a story about the impact Augustine's ideas were to have
on the attitude to women of generations yet to come. The letters
also constitute Floria's critical comments on St Augustine"s
Confessions, as they illuminate the philosophy and
literature of late Antiquity.
Hallo? - Er det noen her? (1996)
Hello? Anybody there?
Joakim, the eight-year-old protagonist, is about to become a big
brother and has convinced himself that the baby will be a boy. A
bright little lad, he has already decided how he intends to
initiate his brother into the mysteries of life. To this end he
receives unexpected assistance from a strange figure from outer
space who lands upside-down in the apple tree in the garden. The
visitor is Mika from the planet Eljo, and he and Joakim soon
find that they have a lot in common. But many things that are
perfectly normal for human beings are anything but for someone
from another planet, and Joakim is forced to start thinking
about what makes things tick. He realizes that there is no
answer, at least not to everything: life is, and will for ever
remain, a puzzle.
I et speil, i en gåte (1993)
Through a Glass, Darkly
Cecilie is ill and has no chance of getting well. Everyone is
busy celebrating Christmas, but she is too weak to join them.
She confides her thoughts to the Chinese notebook given to her
by a doctor at the hospital. One day she discovers that when she
is alone in her room she can see an angel. She and the angel,
Ariel, begin to converse. Cecilie tries to induce the angel to
reveal some of Heaven's secrets and Ariel tells her of life's
many puzzles and about the place of the world in the grand
scheme of things; in return, Cecilie teaches him what it is like
to be human. The conversations between the two evolve into a
meeting between Heaven and Earth, into an attempt to determine
both what life is all about and what it is like - and also about
what it is like 'on the other side'.
Sofies verden (1991)
Roman om filosofiens historie
Sophie's World
A Novel about the History of Philosophy
An absorbing, original and fascinating book for all who wish to
know more about the history of our own culture, interwoven with
the history of western philosophy and the imaginary story of
Sophie and Hilde. The fact is that, to solve the mysteries that
are a part of Sophie's world, we need an understanding of
European philosophy. Who is Hilde Møller Knag? Why does Sophie
keep coming across Hilde's things? Why does she get Hilde's
mail? The story ends in Hilde's garden in the small town of
Lillesand on the south coast of Norway. Or does it? Perhaps it
is there that it begins. Through her perusal of letters from a
mysterious philosopher, Alberto Knox, who initiates her into the
ideas of Europe's great thinkers, Sophie gradually acquires the
knowledge she needs to solve the mysteries surrounding her. The
book has subsequently appeared as a CD-ROM and been made into a
musical, board game, film and television series.
Kabalmysteriet (1990)
The Solitaire Mystery
A novel for young readers which ranges far and wide in space and
time. We follow a father and his son on their journey through
Europe in search of the boy's mother, though underlying this
theme are many other stories. What is the link between them? And
why must Hans Thomas go back to a shipwreck in 1790 to
understand why his mother left him to go to Athens? The author
blends fantasy with reality, fairytales with family history.
With warmth and understanding he portrays the relationship
between father and son and their quest for an identity and a
sense of belonging. The book is a journey through Europe - but
also a journey backwards in time to some of the events that have
made Hans Thomas what he is. Fate, or whatever it may have been,
once shuffled the pack to produce him. Time goes round and round
and there is a joker at large in the world. Hans Thomas is
presented with a magnifying glass by a dwarf he meets at a
petrol station in Switzerland; and in the little village of Dorf
he is given a tiny book baked within a bun - which he is able to
read with the aid of the magnifying glass.
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