“Don’t tell me nature isn’t a miracle. Don’t tell me the world isn’t a fairy tale. Anyone who hasn’t realised that, may never understand until the fairy tale is just about to end. Then there is one final chance to tear off the blinkers, a last chance to rub your eyes in amazement, a final opportunity to abandon yourself to the wonder you are bidding farewell to and leaving.” JG
Jostein Gaarder (author of Sophie’s World) 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.
To Georg Røed, his father is no more than a shadow, a distant memory, but one day his grandmother discovers something stuffed into the lining of an old red pushchair. The pages she finds are a letter to Georg, written just before his father died, and a story entitled, 'The Orange Girl'.
The story is request for his son George to solve the mystery of the orange girl’s identity. The Orange Girl was called thus because the day Georg’s father, Jan Olav bumped into her, she was carrying a bag of oranges and wearing an orange anorak at times.
The Orange Girl is modern philosophical fairy tale, about love, about death, about the universe and asks pertinent questions about all of this. The essential question being whether the short period of time each and everyone of us gets to spend on earth is worth it.
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