Eleven Minutes

The novel Eleven Minutes,' by Paulo Coelho, is a story based around a young prositute named Maria.

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Maria, from the interior of Brazil, goes to seek her fortune in Switzerland, only to find that reality is harsher than she expected and she ends up working in a brothel on Rue du Berne, the heart of Geneva's red-light district.

Related Topics:
Brazil - Switzerland - Rue du Berne - Geneva

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Maria gradually goes down a path of subtle self-destruction until she meets a painter with whom she falls in love. From here on the book is, like many Coelho books, a journey of self-discovery.

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Coelho, for this novel, changes his writing style slightly, reverting from direct, extremely coherent, chronological narrative, to a slightly more disjointed, progressive approach. By most literary standards, this is not particularly progressive but it is by Coelho's own standards.

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The message (central to any Coelho novel) is slightly darker this time. All his books before this are very optimistic, almost overly so.

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