Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder

Looking in her mailbox one morning, a fourteen-year-old Norwegian schoolgirl called Sophie Amundsen finds a surprising piece of paper. One it are written two questions: ‘Who are you?’ and ‘Where did the world come from?’

The writer is an enigmatic philosopher called Albert Knox, and his two teasing questions are the beginning of an extraordinary tour through the history of Western Philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Sartre. In a series of brilliantly entertaining letters, and then in person (with his dog, Hermes), Albert Knox opens Sophie’s enquiring mind to the fundamental questions that philosophers have been asking since the dawn of civilisation.

But as soon as Sophie begins to find her feet in this dazzling, exciting new world, she and Albert find themselves caught up in a plot which is itself a most perplexing philosophical conundrum…

Sophie’s World has at its centre a curious teenager seeking to cast her understanding of the world ever wider as she approaches her fifteenth birthday, which falls on midsummer’s day.

As all budding philosophers know, in order to learn, you first have to know what you don’t know. At first, Sophie is confused by the questions she receives from Albert – like many of us, she has never really thought deeply about these issues before. However, she becomes more and more used to twisting her mind around these fundamental but complex questions thrown at her by Albert.

Each chapter covers a different philosophical school of thought, working forwards through time. The book is very cleverly written, putting Sophie and Albert into increasingly convoluted existential circumstances, according to whichever philosophy is the focus at that time. Sophie has to work hard to understand the basis on which she exists in each scenario, and this is a mind-bending exercise for Sophie and reader alike.

Aside from the intriguing and innovative premise for the book, reading Sophie’s World is what first made me want to visit Norway. Set in midsummer, the descriptions made it sound like the purest and most natural place imaginable – the crisp, clean air, the perpetual light, the long evenings, the bubbling streams and sunlight streaking through quiet woods – Gaarder really portrays Norway as the delight it is.