The ​Solitaire Mystery 1 csillagozás

Jostein Gaarder: The Solitaire Mystery Jostein Gaarder: The Solitaire Mystery Jostein Gaarder: The Solitaire Mystery

Twelve-year-old Hans and his father have left home to search for Hans's mother. She went to Greece to 'find herself' when he was four. Hans's father loves to philosophise on life (and to drink) and Hans is always happy to listen. But this turns out to be a strange journey. A dwarf in Switzerland gives Hans a magnifying glass. Next day a baker gives him a bun with a tiny book in it. As Hans begins to read the book, he discovers an incredible cast of characters, from a shipwrecked sailor to a Joker who looks too deeply and too much. The more he reads, the more Hans begins to think that the book is trying to tell him something about his own life. But will it help him to find his mother? An incredibly imaginative book, that lingers in the mind long after the last page has been read.

Eredeti megjelenés éve: 1990

Tagok ajánlása: Hány éves kortól ajánlod?

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Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1996
310 oldal · ISBN: 9780374266516
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Orion, London, 1996
352 oldal · puhatáblás · ISBN: 1897580096 · Fordította: Sarah Jane Hails

Népszerű idézetek

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What happened is as follows: Grandma got a flat tyre when she was up at Froland with a basketful of cowberries. Of course she didn’t have a repair kit with her, but even if she’d had a thousand and one repair kits, she probably couldn’t have fixed the bike herself. That was when a German soldier came cycling along the country road. Although he was German, he was not particularly militant. On the contrary, he was very polite to the young girl who could not get home with her cowberries. Furthermore, he had a repair kit with him. Now, if Grandpa had been one of those malicious brutes we readily believe all German soldiers occupying Norway at that time were, he could have just kept going. But of course that’s not the point. No matter what, Grandma should have stuck her nose in the air and refused to accept any help from the German military.

13. oldal (Orion, 1996)

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Dad refers to what happened next as human devilry – and at this point he usually lights another cigarette. Dad was born just before liberation in May 1945. As soon as the Germans surrendered, Grandma was taken prisoner by the Norwegians, who hated all Norwegian girls who had been with German soldiers. Unfortunately, there were more than a few of these girls, but it was worse for those who’d had a child with a German. The truth was that Grandma had been with Grandpa because she loved him – and not because she was a Nazi. Actually, Grandpa wasn’t a Nazi either. Before he’d been grabbed by the collar and sent back to Germany, he and Grandma had been making plans to escape to Sweden together.

14. oldal (Orion, 1996)

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Neither Grandma nor Dad seeks to excuse what happened at Froland. The only thing you might question is the punishment. For example, how many generations should be punished for one offence? Naturally, Grandma must take her part of the blame for getting pregnant, and that is something she’ll never deny. I think it’s more difficult to accept that people believed it was right to punish the child, too.

14. oldal (Orion, 1996)

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‘Why was the poor girl shaven?’
‘I didn’t know that she was,’ I replied. ‘I didn’t know they were so cruel to her, but I heard that they did that sort of thing after the liberation. Girls who had been with enemy soldiers lost their hair as well as their honour.

262. oldal (Orion, 1996)

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As we drove towards the town, Dad told me the terribly sad story of Romeo and Juliet, who couldn’t be together because their two families were always at war with each other. The young couple – who had to pay with their lives for their forbidden love – had lived in Verona many hundreds of years ago. ‘It sounds a bit like Grandma and Grandpa,’ I said, and Dad laughed heartily. He’d never thought of that before.

77. oldal (Orion, 1996)

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There are five billion people living on this planet. But you fall in love with one particular person, and you won’t swap her for any other.

78. oldal (Orion, 1996)

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‘The chances of one single ancestor of yours not dying while growing up is one in several billion,’ he went on, and now the words flowed out of him like a waterfall. ‘Because it isn’t just about the Black Death, you know. Actually all your ancestors have grown up and had children – even during the worst natural disasters, even when the child mortality rate was enormous. Of course, a lot of them have suffered from illness, but they’ve always pulled through. In a way, you have been a millimetre from death billions of times, Hans Thomas. Your life on this planet has been threatened by insects, wild animals, meteorites, lightning, sickness, war, floods, fires, poisoning, and attempted murders. In the battle of Stiklestad alone you were injured hundreds of times. Because you must have had ancestors on both sides – yes, really you were fighting against yourself and your chances of being born a thousand years later. You know, the same goes for the last world war. If Grandpa had been shot by good Norwegians during the occupation, then neither you nor I would have been born. The point is, this has happened billions of times through history. Each time an arrow has rained through the air, your chances of being born have been reduced to the minimum. But here you are, sitting talking to me, Hans Thomas! Do you see?’

106-107. oldal (Orion, 1996)

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The fact was, Dad considered himself a joker. He rarely said it straight out, but I had known for a long time that he saw himself as a joker in a pack of cards. A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He’s not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He’s not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn’t belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.

56-57. oldal (Orion, 1996)

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When people are interested in the “supernatural”, they suffer from a remarkable blindness. They don’t see the most mysterious thing of all – that the world exists. They are more interested in Martians and flying saucers than in the whole of this puzzling creation which is unfolding at our feet. I don’t think the world is a coincidence, Hans Thomas.

108. oldal (Orion, 1996)

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Our lives are part of a unique adventure, I thought to myself. Nevertheless, most of us think the world is ‘normal’ and are constantly hunting for something abnormal – like angels or Martians. But that is just because we don’t realise the world is a mystery. As for myself, I felt completely different. I saw the world as an amazing dream. I was hunting for some kind of explanation of how everything fitted together.

124. oldal (Orion, 1996)


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