The Year of Living Philosophically (Paperback or Softback)

In this comic retelling of The Sorrows of Young Werther, dictionary editor Dave Gardner is in love not with his best friend's fiancée but with the fiancée of his worst enemy.

Can philosophy help him out? What if he was to spend the year living each month according to a different philosophy, from Hedonist and Stoic to Rationalist and Existentialist? Will 2000 years of accumulated wisdom help him win the heart of ravishing colleague Sophie, who's already in a relationship with mysteriously wealthy Dom? If nothing else, can philosophy teach us how to embrace life's inevitable disappointments? Aided by his philosophy lecturer friend Max, Dave sets about finding out...

Written in diary form, the novel tackles big philosophical questions with a light playful touch. Dave's philosophical lodestars are not Hume, Kant and Nietzsche but The Simpsons, Monty Python and Morrissey. So if you've always wanted to know about the history of Western philosophy but thought there weren't enough jokes in Sophie's World, this may be just the book for you.

Robert Grossmith is a UK writer, based near Norwich. His short stories have been widely anthologized, including in The Time Out Book of London Short Stories, The Best of Best Short Stories and The Penguin Book of First World War Stories. He has also published a novel about lucid dreaming, The Empire of Lights (Hamish Hamilton, 1990), as well as poems, scholarly articles and book reviews. He has a BA in Philosophy & Psychology and a PhD on Vladimir Nabokov and worked for many years as a bilingual dictionary editor. Further information is available at www.robertgrossmith.com