Maya or the miracle of life
Maya or the miracle of life is a philosophical novel by the Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder from 1999.
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The Norwegian paleontologist Frank travels through Oceania to conduct research and to gain distance from the painful separation from his wife. The story begins with a matchbox flight to Taveuni , Fiji Island on the date line, where Frank spends three nights in a small resort. During his stay, he had philosophical discussions with a gecko named Gordon about the meaning of life and humanity. The evenings are spent exchanging different world views and further philosophical discussions. He spends some time at the resort with a Spanish couple whose woman looks familiar to him, although he doesn't know where from, and keeps listening secretly when they mumble enigmatic Spanish verses to themselves. In the course of the book, Frank finds out where he has seen Ana, the Spanish flamenco dancer, before. Then a fantastic and at the same time philosophical legend is told.
The whole story is a letter that Frank wrote to his wife and also made available to an English writer. But actually the writer, who was also on Taveuni and knows the protagonists from the letter, just made up the story. At the end of the book he meets Frank in Spain, and the question arises again for the reader, what is really now and what is not.
At the end of the letter, the allusion to The Secret of Cards , which addresses the question "What is the cause and what is the effect?" Is interesting .
Translations
The book has been translated into eleven different languages:
- Arabic
- German
- Greek
- French
- English
- Dutch
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Spanish
- Turkish
- Latin
Book editions
- Jostein Gaarder: Maya or the miracle of life . dtv, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-13002-4