SOLVED. Children's about this world where everyone was immortal and no-one’d ever been dead and only two children existed, a boy and a girl, otherwise it was adults they’d hear stories told by this dreamer wizard [s]

[Mauro]

hey

this was a book I read when I was 9 or so, so about late 90's/early 2000s, in Portuguese. no illustrations, some 150 pages, softcover.

EDIT: forgot to add, I read it in Portuguese but it was a foreign book. I want to say Scandinavian? Unsure.

here's what I remember

it was about this world where everyone was immortal and no-one’d ever been dead

and only two children existed, a boy and a girl, otherwise it was adults

they’d hear stories told by this dreamer wizard who’d make figures with smoke after sleeping for ages creating small dreams inside small glass spheres

and they built a giant castle out of pebbles

they get bored as the centuries pass though so they ask the wizard for a dream unlike any he’d had

so he creates the universe, which takes millions to grow

it’s inside a glass sphere that grows ever larger

once it’s big enough he sends them to Earth on a glass sphere ship so they can learn what it’s like

and then I dont really remember the rest other than something goes wrong

the ship’s broken somehow and they end up losing immortality and being adopted by a family, where they prove they're really from another world by showing their lack of bellybuttons

at one point their wizard friend visits them (when he asks them to choose whether to stay and eventually die or go back) and meets a friendly hiker, or writer, they'd met, who also smoked but just real world tobacco. he may've been named sven

and the book just ended on that bittersweet note of them now being able to grow up and have a life, but never again being able to go back to their world and eventually going to die


this sound like anything to anyone?

[Michele]

Wow, this sounds interesting. I hope someone can solve it, I'd like to read it too.

[Sam]

As would I.

[Mauro]

Sam wrote: "As would I."

Michele wrote: "Wow, this sounds interesting. I hope someone can solve it, I'd like to read it too."

Hey, replying years later as just now, by accident, I found a different book but recognised the writer's name, and realised it was the same writer as this one.

The book is by Jostein Gaarder and in the original was titled "Barna fra Sukhavati". Here's more info: https://www.worldcat.org/title/barna-...

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Great. Thanks for letting us know Mauro.