One day Sophie comes home from school to find two questions in her mail: Who are you? and Where does the world come from? Before she knows it, she is enrolled in a correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre and beyond, with a mysterious philosopher. But Sophie is receiving a separate batch of equally unusual letters. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up in Sophie's world? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must make use of the philosophy she is learning. But the truth is far more complicated than she could have imagined.

One day Sophie comes home from school to find two questions in her mail: Who are you? and Where does the world come from? Before she knows it, she is enrolled in a correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre and beyond, with a mysterious philosopher. But Sophie is receiving a separate batch of equally unusual letters. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up in Sophie's world? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must make use of the philosophy she is learning. But the truth is far more complicated than she could have imagined...

PLATO

 ... a longing to return to the realm of the soul...

THE MAJOR'S CABIN

 ... the girl in the mirror winked with both eyes...

ARISTOTLE

 ... a meticulous organizer who wanted to clarify our concepts...

HELLENISM

 ... a spark from the fire...

THE POSTCARDS

 ... I'm imposing a severe censorship on myself...

TWO CULTURES

 ...the only way to avoid floating in a vacuum...

THE MIDDLE AGES

 ... going only part of the way is not the same as going the wrong way...

THE RENAISSANCE

 ... O divine lineage in mortal guise...

THE BAROQUE

 ... such stuff as dreams are made on...

DESCARTES

 ... he wanted to clear all the rubble off the site...

SPINOZA

 ... God is not a puppeteer...

LOCKE

 ... as bare and empty as a blackboard before the teacher arrives...

HUME

 ... commit it then to the flames...

BERKELEY

 ... like a giddy planet round a burning sun...

BJERKELY

 ... an old magic mirror Great-grandmother had bought from a Gypsy woman...

THE ENLIGHTENMENT

 ... from the way needles are made to the way cannons are founded...

KANT

 ... the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me...

ROMANTICISM

 ... the path of mystery leads inwards...

HEGEL

 ... the reasonable is that which is viable...

K1ERKEGAARD

 ... Europe is on the road to bankruptcy...

MARX

 ... a spectre is haunting Europe...

DARWIN

 ... a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes...

FREUD

 ... the odious egoistic impulse that had emerged in her...

OUR OWN TIME

 ... man is condemned to be free...

THE GARDEN PARTY

 ... a white crow...

COUNTERPOINT

 ... two or more melodies sounding together...

THE BIG BANG

 ... we too are stardust...

INDEX

THE GARDEN OF EDEN

 ... at some point something must have come from nothing...

THE TOP HAT

 ... the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder...

THE MYTHS

 ... a precarious balance between the forces of good and evil...

THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS

 ... nothing can come from nothing...

DEMOCRITUS

 ... the most ingenious toy in the world...

FATE

 ... the "fortune-teller" is trying to foresee something that is really quite unforeseeable...

SOCRATES

 ... wisest is she who knows she does not know...

ATHENS

 ... several tall buildings had risen from the ruins...