Despite his use of child narrators and concern with childhood problems, readers of all ages have become engaged with the underlying "adult" questions running throughout much of his oeuvre: who are we, from where does the world come, and from where do we come? In revealing life through the eyes of a child, Gaarder forces even the most sophisticated adult readers to contemplate their existence on earth. Whereas Henrik Ibsen, the much-celebrated Norwegian dramatist of one hundred years earlier, achieved world fame through his stark depictions of bourgeois life in the 1890s and continues to have an adult following, Gaarder more closely resembles the nineteenth-century Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen, whose tales may appear on the surface to appeal to children but on closer analysis reveal intricate layers of social commentary that only an adult reader could comprehend. Like Andersen, Gaarder succeeds in educating and entertaining readers young and old without adopting a pedantic tone.
It is not surprising that Gaarder has a predilection for educating his readership. He was born on 8 August 1952 to Knut and Inger Margrethe Gaarder. His father was a school headmaster, and his mother was a teacher and author of children's books.
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