This is a novel, we are warned, that will deal with "a subject that is harsh, difficult, shocking": the international crime of "people trafficking". He apologises to his devoted readers in a chatty foreword. (Wise men like you know who.)Įleven Minutes departs somewhat from the Coelho formula. It rushes us from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds", and "It is the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary only wise men are able to understand them". His narratives are larded with such nuggets of higher toshery as: "Life moves very fast. Coelho's usual plot is the quest in which an ingenuous hero or heroine (usually of the lower orders) discovers the meaning of life. Look for the symbolic meanings of the great religions of the world, he was instructed. Masters of simplicity, all of them.Ĭoelho was, he tells us, directed into the path of fiction by a mysterious old geezer who appeared to him out of the ether on a tourist visit to Dachau. Simplicity has something to do with it among his cited sources are Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and the parables of our Lord. His native Portuguese slips easily into English. Coelho's first (and biggest) hit, The Alchemist, chronicled a search for the "universal language".
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |