Jostein Gaarder, trans. by James Anderson. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $24.95 (250p) ISBN 9780297859444
Gaarder's epistolary novel is a broadly drawn exploration of weighty themes. Solrun and Steinn, who had been lovers in their early twenties, reunite thirty years later at the hotel where they had their final weekend together. In their ensuing email...
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Jostein Gaarder, Author, James Anderson, Translator, Sally Gardner, Illustrator Farrar Straus Giroux $15 (144p) ISBN 978-0-374-32948-8
A boy has a dreamlike encounter with a wise child who has fallen to earth from a spaceship in Gaarder's (Sophie's World) limp imitation of Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince. The page layout directly recalls that classic, and the illustrations even...
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Jostein Gaarder, Author, Paulette Miller, Translator, Paulette Moller, Translator Farrar Straus Giroux $25 (403p) ISBN 978-0-374-26642-4
This long, dense novel, a bestseller in the author's native Norway, offers a summary history of philosophy embedded in a philosophical mystery disguised as a children's book-but only sophisticated young adults would be remotely interested. Sophie...
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Jostein Gaarder, Author, Sarah Jane Hails, Translator Farrar Straus Giroux $22 (0p) ISBN 978-0-374-26651-6
Admirers of Gaarder's first translated work, the bestselling Sophie's World, will be familiar with this Norwegian ex-philosophy teacher's talent for transforming what is essentially a vigorous round of mental aerobics into unpredictable, absorbing...
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Jostein Gaarder, Author, Elizabeth Rakkan, Translator, Elizabeth Rokkan, Translator Hill & Wang $23 (240p) ISBN 978-0-374-12329-1
Even grownups enjoy a bedtime story every now and then, especially one that combines, as does this one, the sophistication of a novel with the whimsy of a fairy tale. Gaarder, the Norwegian former professor of philosophy who brought us The Solitaire
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Jostein Gaarder, Author, Anne Born, Translator Farrar Straus Giroux $18 (256p) ISBN 978-0-374-25384-4
Norwegian writer Gaarder's international bestseller, Sophie's World, offered a smorgasbord of philosophical beliefs. Here, the former philosophy teacher weighs in with a much thinner effort. The book's premise--that Gaarder unearths what may be a...
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Jostein Gaarder, trans. from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett, illus. by Akin Düzakin. Elsewhere, $14 (72p) ISBN 978-0-914671-66-4
In a heady contemplation of mortality and existence, Gaarder (The Orange Girl) and Düzakin (Why Am I Here?) follow a boy as he ventures out into the woods under the cover of night. Initially, the boy’s questions seem inspired by his surroundings. “Is
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