In This Story You Will Meet

The Solitaire Mystery

JOSTEIN GAARDER

Illustrations by
Hilda Kramer

Translated by
Sarah Jane Hails

A WEIDENFELD AND NICOLSON EBOOK

First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Phoenix House
This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books

Published be arrangement with Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc.,
18 West 18^th Street, New York, NY 10011

Originally published in Norwegian under the title Kabalmysteriet,
Copyright © H. Aschehoug & Co (W. Nygaard), Oslo 1990

Copyright © Jostein Gaarder 1990
English translation © Sarah Jane Hails 1996

The moral right of Jostein Gaarder to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or
dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 0 2978 6406 6

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

www.orionbooks.co.uk

CONTENTS

Cover

Title

Copyright

Praise

About the Author

By Jostein Gaarder

SPADES

ACE OF SPADES

… German soldier came cycling along the country road…

TWO OF SPADES

… God is sitting in heaven laughing because people don’t believe in Him…

THREE OF SPADES

… a little strange to decorate the forest floor so far away from people …

FOUR OF SPADES

… what I held in my hands was a little book…

FIVE OF SPADES

… I heard the old man walking around in the attic …

SIX OF SPADES

… a drink which is more than a thousand times better…

SEVEN OF SPADES

… a mysterious planet …

EIGHT OF SPADES

… like a whirlwind from foreign lands …

NINE OF SPADES

… he saw peculiar things that everyone else was blind to …

TEN OF SPADES

… like distant islands I would never reach under this boat’s sail …

JACK OF SPADES

… like polished chestnuts …

QUEEN OF SPADES

… these butterflies made a sound like birdsong …

KING OF SPADES

… close encounter of the fourth kind …

CLUBS

ACE OF CLUBS

… exactly the same figures you’d find on playing cards …

TWO OF CLUBS

… He waved two tickets in the air …

THREE OF CLUBS

… a bit of a threesome …

FOUR OF CLUBS

… one huge lottery where only the winning tickets are visible …

FIVE OF CLUBS

… it had already become a bit difficult to play cards …

SIX OF CLUBS

… as though he had to make sure I was a real human being made of flesh and blood …

SEVEN OF CLUBS

… that enamel and ivory grew in my mouth …

EIGHT OF CLUBS

… if our brain was simple enough for us to understand it …

NINE OF CLUBS

… a sweet juice which glitters and tastes mildly sparkling or fizzy …

TEN OF CLUBS

… I couldn’t understand how something could just grow out of nothing …

JACK OF CLUBS

… if the world is a magic trick, then there must be a great magician, too …

QUEEN OF CLUBS

… could at least have signed the masterpiece before He took off …

KING OF CLUBS

… he thought it was downright annoying that he didn’t know more about life and the world …

JOKER

… He stole into the village like a poisonous snake …

DIAMONDS

ACE OF DIAMONDS

… a fair man who wanted all the cards on the table …

TWO OF DIAMONDS

… Old master receives important message from the homeland …

THREE OF DIAMONDS

… She was drawn here by her own reflection …

FOUR OF DIAMONDS

… Her little hand was as cold as the morning dew …

FIVE OF DIAMONDS

… the unfortunate thing was that the drink I was given actually tasted sweet and good …

SIX OF DIAMONDS

… now and then they climbed down to mingle with the people. …

SEVEN OF DIAMONDS

… a big party where the guests had been told to turn up as playing cards …

EIGHT OF DIAMONDS

… We are conjured up and tricked away …

NINE OF DIAMONDS

… we are all part of the same family …

TEN OF DIAMONDS

… a little figure peeping out from behind a newspaper stand …

JACK OF DIAMONDS

… any vanity Dad had was associated with being a joker …

QUEEN OF DIAMONDS

… And then the little clown broke down and cried …

KING OF DIAMONDS

… we had to wear a bell around our necks …

HEARTS

ACE OF HEARTS

… when I turned the card over, I saw that it was the Ace of Hearts …

TWO OF HEARTS

… She is probably standing on a wide beach looking out over the sea …

THREE OF HEARTS

… a woman who was all dressed up and wearing a wide-brimmed hat …

FOUR OF HEARTS

… we don’t know who is dealing the cards either …

FIVE OF HEARTS

… Now I needed to have nerves of steel and not to count my chickens before they hatched …

SIX OF HEARTS

… as real as the sun and the moon …

SEVEN OF HEARTS

… The sticky-bun man shouts down a magic funnel …

EIGHT OF HEARTS

… such a fantastic miracle that it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry …

NINE OF HEARTS

… the world is not mature enough to hear about Frode’s playing cards …

TEN OF HEARTS

… there is a fool walking the earth who is never ravaged by time …

JACK OF HEARTS

… a little man rummaging around in the back seat …

QUEEN OF HEARTS

… then suddenly an elderly lady came out of the old pub …

KING OF HEARTS

… the memories float further and further away from that which once created them …

In This Story You Will Meet

Hans Thomas, who reads the sticky-bun book on his way to the philosophers’ homeland Dad, who grew up in Arendal as the illegitimate child of a German Soldier, before running away to become a sailor Mama, who has lost herself in the fashion world Line, who is Hans Thomas’s grandma Grandpa, who was sent to the eastern front in 1944 The dwarf, who gives Hans Thomas a magnifying glass A fat lady in the pub in Dorf The old baker, who gives Hans Thomas a fizzy drink and four sticky buns in a paper bag A fortune-teller and her extremely beautiful daughter, an American lady who splits herself in two, a Greek fashion agent, a Russian brain researcher, Socrates, King Oedipus, Plato, and a talkative waiter

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