Not everything was going to be nordic genre noir on this blog when approaching any author from Northern Europe. Because beyond the preponderant we always find the brilliant exception. Or at least, as soon as we remove labels, we can enjoy the less thriving genres but always sprinkled with jewels.
How not to remember the Norwegian Jostein Gaarder? With El mundo de Sofía it was well demonstrated that the writer is a universe in himself. As much as Gaarder would have been classified in all children's libraries, the emergence of this novel acquired the relevance of a new little prince that came to bring the child into communion with the adult, with that complete conviction that everything is the same, that the deepest philosophy can be intuited by a child and can be inaccessible to an adult loaded with empty concepts.
Of course only one Philosophy Professor as Jostein Gaarder could house that narrative duality developed in El mundo de Sofía, a fictional synthesis of her knowledge and her interaction with the students.
But the truth is that there is much more in the bibliography of an author viewed with eyes quite different from that of the child storyteller. And that in turn serves to remember that adults are only children loaded with time, subjective ideas to unsuccessfully address the absolute and prejudices developed as a defense mechanism.
Between stories, novels and philosophical essays we find a writer who is always a pleasure to address ...
Top 3 Recommended Books by Jostein Gaarder
Sofia's world
With that connotation of being a turning point in the consideration of children's or youth narrative as a mere introduction to reading, this novel became a bestseller at the same time in which its enduring nature, its notion of classic, was guessed at. at the height of The Little Prince or The endless story.
Each of them from its revolutionary prism of literature for younger ages converted into the basis of a history of literature understood from the foundation of the world's first learning.
The unforgettable Sofia appears as the human open without conditions to knowledge, to knowledge. The letter that ends up moving her towards the knowledge of the world is the same letter that we all find at some point in our lives, with similar questions about the ultimate truth of everything.
The touch of mystery of the novel was an undeniable attraction for young readers, the symbology of its scenes captivated many other open adults in that rescue of the first self exposed to the world with which we suffer a magical mimicry to return to those old questions that we never managed. respond at all.
Thinking about what we are and our end is a continual starting over. And Sofia, that etymological symbol of wisdom, we are all.
The man with the puppets
Our relationship with death leads us to a kind of fatal coexistence where each one assumes the countdown in the best way he can. Dying is the ultimate Contradiction, and Jostein Gaarder knows it.
The protagonist of this new story by the great author is in a particular moment of approach to the deepest doubts about death, those that we avoid with our day to day. Jakop lives alone and loneliness is the prelude to death.
Perhaps that is why Jakob insists on firing unknown deceased persons. Jakop begins to visit funeral homes to fire peers with whom he never shared anything, and expands on them to others who also come to say goodbye.
But what Jakop does not realize is that, despite his advanced age, there can always be room for welcomes to life, no matter how much he insists that all he has to do is get used to saying goodbye.
Ana's Land
Known for Gaarder's ability to present wonderful miscellanies between the allegorical and the prosaic, this book continues the line of previous works such as Sofia's own world, The Christmas Mystery or The Enigma and the Mirror, a kind of saga between the philosophical and the the fantastic taken up years later with this Land of Ana full of social commitment and criticism towards our civilization driven in an apparent evolution that hides a frenzied destructive involution.
Social advances are of little use if unbridled capitalism exhausts resources and overexploits everything. The story begins with little Ana's birthday and an enigmatic, seemingly innocuous gift.
The brilliance of the ruby of the ring leads us to a dystopian fantasy in which Ana decides to participate in order to avoid the disaster that awaits the new generations. From 2012 to 2028 an awareness trip for children and adults.
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