Paulo Coelho introduces his novel - The Zahir.

A novel of obsession

This October we’re reading The Zahir by Paulo Coelho - the story about a bestselling novelist whose wife, a war correspondent, goes missing. It was first published in 2005 and translated from Portuguese - Paulo’s native language. It received some rave reviews:

An eloquent meditation on commitment - an enlightening story of faith and the reclamation of pure love - a fast-moving, captivating, both satirical and thoughtful novel about love and desire - a book that makes you think and ponder a lot, and that contains important messages that give you the desire to pursue your dreams - a beautiful story.

Reading Schedule:

Week 1 - Pages 1 to 84

Week 2 - Pages 85 to 163

Week 3 - Pages 164 to 254

Week 4 Pages 255 to 350

The novel still stands the test of time as a gripping read and over the next 4 weeks, I will ‘unpack’ the psychological sub-plot that is revealed within the author’s ‘obsession’ to find his wife - whatever the cost. In this post, I will let Paulo set the scene for our slow read:

A DEDICATION

In the car, I mentioned that I had finished the first draft of my book. Later, as we set out together to climb a mountain in the Pyrenees which we both consider to be sacred and where we have already shared some extraordinary moments, I asked if she wanted to know the main theme of the book or its title; she would love to, she said, but, out of respect for my work, she had, until then, asked nothing, she had simply felt glad—very glad.

So I told her the title and the main theme. We continued walking in silence and, on the way back, we heard a noise; the wind was getting up, passing above the leafless trees and coming down toward us, causing the mountain once more to reveal its magic and its power.

Suddenly the snow began to fall. I stopped and stood contemplating that moment: the snowflakes falling, the gray sky, the forest, the woman by my side. The woman who has always been by my side.

I felt like telling her then, but decided to let her find out when she read these pages for the first time. This book is dedicated to you, Christina, my wife.

According to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, the idea of the Zahir comes from Islamic tradition and is thought to have arisen at some point in the eighteenth century. Zahir, in Arabic, means visible, present, incapable of going unnoticed. It is someone or something which, once we have come into contact with them or it, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either a state of holiness or of madness.

FAUBOURG SAINT-PÈRES - Encyclopaedia of the Fantastic (1953)

The fictional author of this story reveals the background to the plot:

Her name is Esther; she is a war correspondent who has just returned from Iraq because of the imminent invasion of that country; she is thirty years old, married, without children. He is an unidentified male, between twenty-three and twenty-five years old, with dark, Mongolian features. The two were last seen in a café on the Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré.

The police were told that they had met before, although no one knew how often: Esther had always said that the man—who concealed his true identity behind the name Mikhail—was someone very important, although she had never explained whether he was important for her career as a journalist or for her as a woman.

The police began a formal investigation. Various theories were put forward—kidnapping, blackmail, a kidnapping that had ended in murder—none of which were beyond the bounds of possibility given that, in her search for information, her work brought her into frequent contact with people who had links with terrorist cells. They discovered that, in the weeks prior to her disappearance, regular sums of money had been withdrawn from her bank account: those in charge of the investigation felt that these could have been payments made for information. She had taken no change of clothes with her, but, oddly enough, her passport was nowhere to be found.

He is a stranger, very young, with no police record, with no clue as to his identity.

She is Esther, thirty years old, the winner of two international prizes for journalism, and married.

My wife.

Available here: https://amzn.to/4dKnQJb