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Main page » Audiobooks » Paulo Coelho - Eleven Minutes


Paulo Coelho - Eleven Minutes

 
114

version: abridged
format:  mp3
bitrate: 128 kbps
runtime: 06:14:09
read by: Derek Jacobi and Emilia Fox
text:    pdf







Book Description
'His books have had a life-enhancing impact on millions of people.' The Times

This is the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heart-broken and believing that 'Love is a terrible thing that makes you suffer …' When a chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, she dreams of finding fame and fortune yet ends up working as a prostitute.
As Maria drifts further away from love, she develops a fascination with sex. But when she meets a handsome young painter she finds she must choose between pursuing a dark path of sexual pleasure for its own sake, or risking everything for the possibility of sacred sex; sex in the context of love.
Eleven Minutes is a gripping and daring novel, which sensitively explores the sacred nature of sex and love, inviting us to confront our own prejudices and embrace our 'inner light'.

Amazon


"Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria"-thus begins Coelho's latest novel, a book that cannot decide whether it wants to be fairy tale or saga of sexual discovery, so ends up satisfying the demands of neither. In his dedication, bestselling Brazilian novelist Coelho (The Alchemist) tells readers that his book will deal with issues that are "harsh, difficult, shocking," but neither his tame forays into S&M nor his rather technical observations about female anatomy and the sad but hardly new fact that many women are dissatisfied with their sex lives will do much to shock American readers. In Maria, however, the author has created a strong, sensual young woman who grabs our sympathy from the first, as she suffers unrequited love as a child, learns a bit about sex as a teenager and, at 19, makes the ill-advised decision to leave Rio on a Swedish stranger's promise of fame and fortune. Maria's trials and triumphs-she goes from restaurant dancer to high-class prostitute-would make for an entertaining if rather prosaic novel, but Coelho, unfortunately, does not leave it there. Instead, he embarks on a philosophical exploration of sexual love, using Maria's increasingly ponderous and pseudo-philosophical diary entries as a means for expounding on the nature of sexual desire, passion and love. At the end, the story boils down to a rather predictable romance tarted up with a few sexy trappings.

About the author
Paulo Coelho was born in Brazil and has become one of the most widely read authors in the world today. Renowned for his best-loved work, The Alchemist, he has sold more than 43 million books worldwide and has been translated into 56 languages. The recipient of numerous prestigious international awards, amongst them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum and France's Legion d'Honneur, Paulo Coelho is a writer with the power to inspire nations.



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Tags: Coelho, neither, Minutes, Eleven, shocking, readers, observations, about, female