“Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria. Wait a minute, ‘Once upon a time’ is how all the best children stories begin and ‘prostitute’ is a word for adults. How can I start a book with this apparent contradiction? But since at every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss, let’s keep that beginning.”
This is how the book starts. Eleven minutes by Paulo Coeilho about, well, Maria’s journey from self-destruction through self discovery.
Quite an interesting read I may add, very, ummm… educational!
Anyways… this is a snippet of the book I particularly liked
“…I would quote from Plato. According to him, at the beginning of creation, men and women were not as they are now; there was just one being, who was rather short, with a body and a neck, but his head had two faces, looking in different directions. It was as if two creatures had been glued back to back, with two sets of sex organs, four legs and four arms.
The Greek gods, however, were jealous, because this creature with four arms could work harder, with its two faces, it was always vigilant and could not be taken by surprise, and its four legs meant that it could stand or walk for long periods at a time without tiring. Even more dangerous was the fact that the creature had two sets of organs and so needed no one else in order to continue producing.
‘Zeus, the supreme lord of Olympus, said:” I have a plan to make these mortals lose some of their strength.”
‘And he cut the creature in two with a lightning bolt, thus creating man and woman. This greatly increased the population of the world and at the same time, disoriented and weakened its inhabitants, because now they had to search for their lost half and embrace it and, in that embrace regain their former strength and their ability to avoid betrayal and the stamina to walk for long periods of time and to withstand hard work. That embrace in which two bodies re-fuse to become one again is what we call sex.’ “
Nice reading it seems to be… and I didn’t know that Zeus was the one who created our mess -.-
Again… great blog, great writer and great Fragment.
Congratulations… personally I’ve spent good times reading your posts, hope you increase them next year.
Merry xmas, happy 2007 and happy Eid.
It’s an interesting book but it’s quite explicit I have to say!I was shocked at the detialed encounters he describes,and I honestly thought there must be sort of an age limitation on who can read this book.i also found the way things went that drove Maria to become a prostitute rather a bit unconvincing..ya3ni she did not really need to become one,she just chose to when she could have stopped and left at any moment..she could have even not started doing that if she really wanted..
Many of our “choices” in life may not make sense to others Salam, or to ourselves for that matter, fact remains, that people tend to take the easy way out almost every single time.
Explicit as it may be, it is an interesting book indeed…
ok. now you have me dying to read it and I had already made up my mind that Paulo was overrated. :S
you got me wanting to read it too, although i’m not fund of paulo… I find him a repetitive writer… but i’ll put that book in mind!
One of Coelho’s best books actually.
I agree with Salam that there must be an age limitation, it’s still an interesting read though, enjoy