With events and experiences from his own life as pivot points, Jostein Gaarder has written a personal, beautiful story, an attempt to understand the world, a philosophy of life. In this charming and fabulous story, he returns to thoughts that have always occupied him. Since he as a child one day saw the world, as if for the first time, and asked himself: Isn't it strange that we live? Isn't it strange that the world exists? Or when he is a few years older, in the forest under the open sky, knows that he really belongs to this world, that he is not only in nature, but is nature himself. Gaarder does not limit himself to us who are here now, but writes in an engaging and easy-to-understand manner about the big bang 13.7 billion years ago. This is how he places the story about Earth in a cosmic world order. Not least, he keeps us stuck with the most important of all questions: How will we, together, manage to take care of our civilization, the very basis of life on Earth? It is our responsibility, our obligation -- to all grandchildren, and all their grandchildren. Because we are the ones here now.