Roberto Bacci Books

Conversations about life and death, between a girl and an angel.

A box of Latin manuscripts comes to light in an Argentine flea market. An apocryphal invention by some 17th or 18th century scholar, or a transcript of what it appears to be - a hitherto unheard of letter to St. Augustine from a woman he renounced for chastity? Vita Brevis is both an entrancing human document and a fascinating insight into the life and philosophy of St. Augustine. Gaarder's interpretation of Floria's letter is as playful, inventive and questioning as Sophie's World .

They meet on a spring day in the local garden center: Inge, a native Swede, lovely and refined, is a woman ruled by reason and her own deeply held moral beliefs; and Mira, a Chilean immigrant who still feels out of place in the cold Scandinavian north, and has spent far too much of her life searching for meaning. Intrigued by one another, the two women are nevertheless wary of the great cultural differences that seem to separate their lives. Yet both are single mothers devoted to their children, and both find joy and comfort in cultivating plants and flowers -- and so together, they begin to develop a close bond. Through many afternoons spent amid the beauty of Inge's garden, Mira slowly reveals the horrors of a shadowed past and the heartbreak involving her beloved daughter. As Mira and her family begin a wrenching journey of discovery, Inge unwittingly uncovers secrets in her own life that make her question the very order of her world . . . and wonder whether the truth is really what any of them needs to find -- or if, in fact, it is the truth that will destroy them.