Sophie's World.
By Jostein Gaarder
The foil for Gaarder’s pedagogic fantasy is Sophie Amundsen, a spunky 14-year-old whose philosophic journey begins when a pair of timeless ontological posers—”Who are you?” and “Where does the world come from?”appear mysteriously in her mailbox.
A follow-up envelope containing typewritten pages titled “What Is Philosophy?” (11) orient her on a correspondence course in the history of philosophy that eventually turns into a Socratic tutorial. Sophie’s enthusiasm shocks her mother, who attributes her newfound interest in the mysteries of life to the influence of drugs.
