From the creative genius of Jostein Gaarder comes a beautiful novel about loneliness and the power of words. Jakop is a lonely man. Divorced from his wife, with no friends apart from his constant companion Pelle, he spends his life attending the funerals of people he doesn't know, obscuring his identity in a web of improbable lies. As his addiction to storytelling spirals out of control, he is forced to reconcile his love of language and stories with the ever more urgent need for human connection.
Author
Jostein Gaarder is a Norwegian intellectual and author of several novels, short stories, and children's books. Gaarder often writes from the perspective of children, exploring their sense of wonder about the world. He often uses meta-fiction in his works, writing stories within stories. Gaarder was born into a pedagogical family. His best known work is the novel Sophie's World, subtitled "A Novel about the History of Philosophy." This popular work has been translated into fifty-three languages; there are over thirty million copies in print, with three million copies sold in Germany alone. In 1997, he established the Sophie Prize together with his wife Siri Dannevig. This prize is an international environment and development prize (USD 100,000 = 77,000 €), awarded annually. It is named after the novel.
