Sophie's World, A Novel Ambivalence...

Abstract

Introduction:  Two features of Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy stand out immediately. One is the unusually ambitious sub-title: the other is its index. Few novels come equipped with so detailed a map of their ingredients. These two aspects are a good measure of the novel's ambivalence. Gaarder has structured an investigatation into the twentieth-century roles of character and author around a history of philosophy-or has he disguised a tale of uncertain realities by surrounding it with a skeleton course in philosophy?