Maya (Hardcover)

Jostein Gaarder is not one to shirk at the larger questions: who are we? and where does the world come from? In his latest novel, Maya, he once again addresses life, the universe and pretty much everything else, concentrating on the existence of God, the evolution of life as we know it, the nature of consciousness and the meaning behind it all. It's weighty stuff for a mere 300 or so pages of prose, and Gaarder is not entirely successful in dealing with these issues in a readable manner.

The novel is set in Madrid and on the unspoiled Fijian island of Taveuini. Frank Andersen, a Norwegian evolutionary biologist who feels "oppressed by the grief that the lack of spirit and permanence in our existence brings", meets up with a beautiful Spanish Flamenco dancer, Ana, her companion Jose, and an English writer from Croydon, John Spoke. They then discuss the big issues. This is where the problem arises; there is too much discussion of ideas and not enough emotional involvement or development of characters. They exist merely as mouthpieces for different theories. Gaarder then adds a bewildering supernatural dimension. There is Ana and Jose's manifesto, a mystical dialogue that describes the creation and evolution process in a series of self-consciously obscure metaphors to consider; hints of past lives; a time-travelling dwarf; and an enigmatic photograph. All this excitement sits uneasily with the almost pedantic prose style.

Gaarder's forte is to incorporate challenging themes into a flowing, imaginative narrative. The author's earlier novel,Sophie's World, has been a phenomenal success; the novel has sold over 16 million copies, been translated into 42 languages and is a whistle-stop tour of philosophy, from Socrates to Sartre. Unfortunately in the case of Maya, the story fails to grip the reader enough and lacks the fluidity of prose that made Sophie's World such a delight to read. --Eithne Farry

A shamelessly didactic novel, read by many who would never have picked up a copy of Plato in anger, Sophie's World caught the imagination of the English language reading public by being very different to anything being written in English at the time. (This may still be the case, hence the popularity of European writers of intellectual diversions, such as Gaarder and Umberto Eco.) Now, with Maya, Gaarder returns to the philosophical entertainment, and his scope is as big as ever; bigger, in fact, since, as opposed to simply the playful history of the thought processes of homo sapiens, Maya is concerned with the struggle for self-awareness, in evolution and in art. The island of Taveuni, the only island on earth where the visitor can straddle today and tomorrow across the international dateline, is the setting for a curious meeting of minds, including John Spooke, an English novelist, Frank, a Norwegian evolutionary biologist, Ana, a Spanish flamenco dancer, and her TV producer partner Jose; a meeting that spills over into further apparently coincidental encounters in Spain, where Frank attempts reconciliation with his estranged wife, and meets Ana and Jose. The gentle, almost benign scheming of the protagonists (another reminiscence of Sophie's World) results in a fine, rich mixture of science and art, curiosity and the satisfaction of understanding that is Gaarder's trademark. Gaarder's great strength as a narrator is his profound awareness that the act of understanding is as powerful and satisfying as any emotion, and his novels are intriguing journeys towards greater understanding. Maya is also about love and loss, acts of creation, and fear of extinction, and it's about the necessity for forgiveness and redemption. It's about building worlds, and inhabiting worlds of which you yourself are a facet. It's about so many things you'd think it would rupture its bindings and spill out into the real world; and it's about that as well. Gaarder is a writer of books that are almost incapable of summary; the best advice I can give is, go and read. Reviewed by Alex Benzie, author of The Angle of Incidence (Kirkus UK)