When I first laid my hands upon the shiny blue cover of Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder, I never expected the effect those brilliant pages would have on my mindset. Gaarder has exploited his art of communicating ideas in this extraordinary masterpiece, where he presents a challenging and thought-provoking history of 3,000 years of Western philosophy.

Sophie Amundsen, a 14-year-old schoolgirl from Norway, finds two pieces of paper in her mailbox one day, with two rather unsettling questions: “Who are you?” and “Where does the world come from?” These questions lead to an extraordinary course of philosophy with an enigmatic philosopher Alberto Knox, who exposes Sophie’s curious mind to the fundamental questions of philosophy that are as old as mankind itself.

Within this remarkable adventure lies an equally mysterious plot that only grows in its intensity of suspense until the final shocking and heart-warming chapter. As you read the book, your mind, too, can’t help but embark upon on this incredible journey of thought and discovery.

Already considered to be philosophy’s answer to Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, I found the book remarkable both in content and in presentation. Packed with easily grasped and imitable ways of thinking, the book offers a lucid and accessible introduction to philosophical ways of exploring the realities of the universe, which is something most books on philosophy fail to deliver. Sophie’s World is a book you simply do not want to miss.