Product Description

Twelve-year-old Hans Thomas lives alone with his father, a man who likes to givehis sons lessons about Life and has a penchant for philosophy. Hans Thomas' mother left when he was four (to find' herself) and the story begins when father and son set off on a trip to Greece, where she now lives, to try to persuade her to come home. En rout, in Switzerland, Hans Thomas is given a magnifying glass by a dwarf at a petrol station, and the next day he finds a tiny book in his bread roll which can only be read with a magnifying glass. How did the book come to be there? Why does the dwarf keep showing up? It is all very perplxing and Hans Thomas has enough to cope with, with the daunting prospect of seeing his mother. Now his journey has turned into an encounter withthe unfathomable...or does it all have a logical explanation?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93060 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-02
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Synopsis
Twelve-year-old Hans Thomas lives alone with his father, a man who likes to givehis sons lessons about Life and has a penchant for philosophy. Hans Thomas' mother left when he was four (to find' herself) and the story begins when father and son set off on a trip to Greece, where she now lives, to try to persuade her to come home. En rout, in Switzerland, Hans Thomas is given a magnifying glass by a dwarf at a petrol station, and the next day he finds a tiny book in his bread roll which can only be read with a magnifying glass. How did the book come to be there? Why does the dwarf keep showing up? It is all very perplxing and Hans Thomas has enough to cope with, with the daunting prospect of seeing his mother. Now his journey has turned into an encounter withthe unfathomable...or does it all have a logical explanation?

About the Author
Jostein Gaarder is the author of SOPHIE'S WORLD, a huge bestseller in over 40 countries. He was born in Oslo in 1952 and lives there now with his wife and two sons.

Customer Reviews

Mystical
This is the fourth Jostein Gaarder book I have read and it has skipped past the others to claim top space and become my favourite. Normally I find the author's books a little dry to begin with but overall hugely worth the effort. However this was not the case with this book. I was hooked from the first page. I always find it interesting that the author has a trademark of writing a book within a book, like the philosophical essay within Sophie's World to the wonderful short stories in The Ringmaster's Daughter. However none of the short stories within the main story have been as wonderful and captivating as the one in this book. You find yourself drawn into the story, trying to keep up and solve the mystery with Hans Thomas, yet you also feel involved in his world, rooting for him to find his mother. I read the whole book in just three evenings, and would heartily recommend it to anybody who still has a bit of a child in them, or those who like Hans' father have a untapped philosophical streak.

Are you a joker?
A dwarf with a magnifying glass, a miniature book inside a sticky bun, a dad with a passion for playing card jokers and philosophising, all add up to one weird journey for 12 year-old Hans Thomas.

It is a journey that is difficult emotionally for both Hans and his father. They are driving from Norway to Greece to find Hans’ mother who left eight years ago to ‘find herself’.

This is another delightfully deceptive book by Jostein Gaarder, the Norwegian author of the best-selling Sophie’s World. Hidden within the exterior of a simple mystery story, Gaarder presents his reader with a view of life that causes one to stop, pause and ponder.

Hans finds that the story of his miniature book intertwines with the story of his life. This is cleverly reflected in the chapter alternation between the two stories. All the chapters are named from a playing card.

As Gaarder progresses through the suits, Hans has to figure out what exactly is the reality that is unfolding. The journey, both literally and through the miniature book’s story, makes Hans face some big questions of life.

This book is all about those ‘big questions of life’. Hans must face the transition from child to adult. His father must face whether his marriage can be mended. We, the readers, must face whether we want to be one of a pack of cards or the joker looking in from the outside.

This book is one to be read when one wants to be baffled, delighted and challenged all at the same time. Be baffled in deciding what is real and what is imaginary. Be delighted by the mastery of Gaarder’s story telling. Be challenged to find the joker in you.

pondering lifes questions....
This was a previous novel by the acclaimed artist of Sophies world.
This is a crafty tale in which the reader is compelled to examine the purpose of their life and other prime philosophical questions.
There is also woven through the story questions of fate – and interesting ideas like do things of fateful purpose become less magical if you broadcast to others what has happened -.
The story is told in the context of a father and son travelling by car across Europe is such of their mother who has left them a while back. The hopeful journey brings them travelling across Europe during which time the father delves into several philosophical musings/lectures in between smoke breaks. The son in the mean time has some strange and unusual events occur to him – such as receiving a magical book that has tiny writing requiring a magnifying glass from which to read it. This book that the son is reading becomes the ‘other story’ and the novel shifts between the two. Gaardner shows many of his literacy tricks in combing the real and imaginary worlds as he did in Sophie worlds again in this novel and some curious events again bring into question the nature of fate and imagination.
The storybook the son discovers is briefly about a sailor who is ship-wrecked on an island and meets a fellow ship-wrecked man who has been there much longer than him. But the island is also mysterious as it contains characters of actual playing cards which have become alive! The two ship-wrecked sailors struggle to believe what they see and wonder which of them is living in their imagination or which of them has lost their mind.
The cards then have sayings that when strung together seem to be closely related to the father and son story in real life and seems to closely parallel events that are happening to them.
Some key questions which are often not very well put in other contexts are explained in the events that happen. It’s a kind of story-tale that sneaks in child-like questions of the utmost philosophical importance into the story. What Gaardner achieves by doing this it seems is that he puts forward questions that allow us to see these questions in a clearer light that they are normally put. The history and philosophical language is subdued much more so than Sophie’s world. Does this has a greater impact? It probably does.
Its refreshing also to run over some of these questions in our lives and to appreciate the value and uniqueness of life. (But tell that to a torture victim or someone falsely imprisoned I couldn’t help counter arguing...).

Whether these questions and the books ideas have an impact on you depends on how familiar you are with these ideas. If you have already considered some of these ideas and thoughts of existence and preciousness of life and have adjusted your life to your findings its not likely that you will find much more than a run-over of these here. But if you are new to the area of philosophy and you are searching for books that discuss such questions this one could be a gold nugget for you!