Aleph
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4.1 • 550 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Transform your life. Rewrite your destiny.
In his most personal novel to date, internationally best-selling author Paulo Coelho returns with a remarkable journey of self-discovery. Like the main character in his much-beloved The Alchemist, Paulo is facing a grave crisis of faith. As he seeks a path of spiritual renewal and growth, he decides to begin again: to travel, to experiment, to reconnect with people and the landscapes around him.
Setting off to Africa, and then to Europe and Asia via the Trans-Siberian Railway, he initiates a journey to revitalize his energy and passion. Even so, he never expects to meet Hilal. A gifted young violinist, she is the woman Paulo loved five hundred years before—and the woman he betrayed in an act of cowardice so far-reaching that it prevents him from finding real happiness in this life. Together they will initiate a mystical voyage through time and space, traveling a path that teaches love, forgiveness, and the courage to overcome life’s inevitable challenges. Beautiful and inspiring, Aleph invites us to consider the meaning of our own personal journeys: Are we where we want to be, doing what we want to do?
Some books are read. Aleph is lived.
This eBook edition includes an excerpt from Paulo Coelho's Manuscript Found in Accra and a Reading Group Guide!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this chimerical tale, protagonist Paolo embarks on a journey to remedy his dissatisfaction with life, a frustration he feels despite enjoying the accoutrements of success. Given that his world includes clairvoyance, Divine Energy, and time-travel, Paolo's is not the usual existential crisis. His present-day troubles, in fact, can be traced to betrayals during a previous incarnation that took place during the Inquisition. When he encounters Hilal, a woman he wronged, complications arise from their shared experience in The Aleph: "the point at which everything is in the same place at the same time." Given the couple's history, Paolo's response is curiously practical and distant: "reopening old wounds is neither easy nor particularly important. The only justification is that the knowledge acquired might help me to gain a better understanding of the present." Although the novel requires ample suspension of disbelief, there's no better author to serve such a work than Coelho (The Alchemist) his main character bears the weight of the sometimes ambiguous and wandering narrative with pithy reflections.
Customer Reviews
My Aleph
(reference Daniel Quinn). Once again Paulo Coelho has struck a chord with me. I have experienced the Aleph, I have met loves from past and future lives, I serve a purpose outside of myself. But I struggle with the erotic love left unresolved in this tome. Of all that rings true, the unrequited advances of Hilal find no peace within me. I too have left lovers incomplete and I carry this burden most likely into the next lifetime, Melusina. And so I can give only four stars out of five for a review. I await my next Coelho read, and my next return to the infinite portal.
Love this book...
I'm reading it right now and I can't put it down. It's almost biblical the way Paulo writes...
Inspiring!
Another great novel from a great man! I always feel inspired to greatness after a Coelho book.