Sophie's World (a word I can't type for some reason, unless I mean to type "word," so please let me know if there are any mistakes I didn't catch) was originally written in Norwegian, and it made me wonder how many other great books are out there that we in America just don't have access to because they aren't translated into English. All the more reason to become multilingual!
Sophie Amundsen is a very normal 14-year-old Norwegian girl. She lives with her mom (her father is almost always away at sea) and has a best friend named Joanna. But then one day, a mysterious envelope shows up in her mailbox, and inside is a slip of paper that says Who are you? on it. Not an hour later, a second letter arrives--Where does the world come from? Sophie's stumped, but there's more in store for her. A large brown envelope arrives later that day with the beginning of a course on philosophy. The anonymous correspondence continues, and Sophie quickly learns more about who her teacher is, but there are more mysteries than that. The personal belongings of a girl named Hilde--who shares Sophie's birthday--keep turning up in her world, as well as postcards to Hilde from the enigmatic girl's father, a UN major in Lebanon. And at the same time, Sophie and her philosophy teacher begin to discover that their world may be nothing like what they've always thought it to be.
Not only is Sophie's World about philosophy, but it is also about writing and being an author and creating characters and so on (I really can't tell you why, since that's a GIANT, HUGE, ABSURDLY MASSIVE spoiler), and so that was really wonderful for me as a writer. Gave me lots to think about. If it didn't give away so much, I'd write more about it, since it's so utterly fascinating and ingenious (if very, very confusing at times), but if you've read Sophie's World or will read it after reading my review, we can discuss it!
I also enjoyed learning some about Norwegian culture through this book, which is the best part about any translated book, no matter the content. There will always be something of the its country of origin that comes through that you don't get in a book just set in another country. I love that. Even though the book is 24 years old (the original came out in 1991) and shows its age in places, I am sure that lots of the fundamental background is still true about modern Norway. I liked the image of Sophie's mother coming into her room on Sophie's 15th birthday with a Norwegian flag in an empty soda bottle.
Another lovely thing is the use of epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter, all excerpts from the chapter you're about to read. Their intention is not to get at the main idea of the chapter; rather, it's to spark your interest, and they certainly work. Here's an example from the beginning of Socrates: "...wisest is she who does not know..." These epigraphs are also how I learned that putting ellipses on either end of a statement automatically makes it more interesting. Try it with a dull phrase; I'm serious.
A final major wonderful part of the book was the end. And I don't mean the very, very end, although that too is fantastic. I mean the last three or so chapters. I mean the philosophical garden party. I can't say more because of spoilers, which people usually hate, but if you love absurdity and randomness, you'll love the ending of Sophie's World (the book can be safely categorized as magical realism).
There's almost nothing about Sophie's World that bothered me, but a few things caught my attention and nibbled my ankle a bit. The characters and especially what they say are seriously not at all realistic. It works for this book, though, since the characters and the dialogue are really just one big vehicle for all the philosophy and such, so it's not that much of a bother. The dialogue could be super funny in its oddness at times, too--the author was quite fond of the word "scandalous," and it ended up used in some very interesting places. One of the most memorable times was when one characters is looking for a female philosopher from the French Revolution (Olympe de Gouges, if you were curious) in the encyclopedia, and she can't find her. "How scandalous!" the character thinks. It made me laugh.
The other moderately annoying thing about the book was that there seemed to be a lot of typos. Once "philosophy" became "philoxsophy" (hello, random X; where'd you come from? I wondered), and once Sophie's name was spelled the Norwegian way (Sofie). None of the typos impaired my understanding, but it is rather irritating to have as many as there were in one book. Perhaps typos are more likely in translated books.
In short, I would recommend this book--well, not quite to anyone, but to most people. It's not easy; at times I had to read passages multiple times to understand them, but I got them eventually. I think that anyone who thinks that philosophy is boring but knows little of it (and how Socrates and others would condemn those who did!) will no longer hold their beliefs after reading Sophie's World. It's also great for writers. It's truly a brilliant, ingenious, entertaining, educational novel, and I'm very, very glad to have read it.