Dressed all in black from head to toe, Jostein Gaarder does not come across as an internationally acclaimed best selling author and novelist.

“Human beings have always asked philosophical questions”. This would have been the first sentence of Sophie’s World according to Jostein Gaarder if fate had not intervened. He almost groans in pain at the thought. When Gaarder first started writing Sophie’s world, he assumed that it would make no money. It started out originally as a manual on philosophy before the protagonist Sophie came to him.

His shoes are scuffed, his hair uncombed but from afar, he seems happy and animated. When Jostein talks, he does so with gesticulation and enthusiasm – it’s as if he can’t get the words out fast enough. Knowing that he was a philosophy teacher prior to becoming an author, one can almost imagine him standing in front of blackboard in that when…