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    Eleven Minutes
    Eleven Minutes
    Eleven Minutes
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

    Eleven Minutes

    Written by Paulo Coelho

    Narrated by Derek Jacobi and Emilia Fox

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The bestselling novel from international literary phenomenon Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist.

    ‘Love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer…’

    So says Maria, a young Brazilian girl convinced from an early age that she will never find true love. A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, but the glittering life she hoped for was a fantasy. The reality – selling herself to survive – is a dehumanising grind that pushes her further away from real love, towards a fascination with pure physical pleasure.

    But when her emotional barriers are tested by a handsome young painter, she must choose between the dark path she is on and risking everything to find her ‘inner light’. Can she move beyond the meeting of minds or even souls – to a place where sex itself is sacred?

    A daring modern fable about the nature of love and sex.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    TranslatorMargaret Jull Costa
    Release dateJan 5, 2009
    ISBN9780007311835
    Eleven Minutes
    Author

    Paulo Coelho

    One of the most influential writers of our time, Paulo Coelho is the author of thirty international bestsellers, including The Alchemist, Warrior of the Light, Brida, Veronika Decides to Die, and Eleven Minutes. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Paulo is the recipient of 115 international prizes and awards, among them, the Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur (Legion of Honor). Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947, he soon discovered his vocation for writing. He worked as a director, theater actor, songwriter, and journalist. In 1986, a special meeting led him to make the pilgrimage to Saint James Compostela (in Spain). The Road to Santiago was not only a common pilgrimage but a turning point in his existence. A year later, he wrote The Pilgrimage, an autobiographical novel that is considered the beginning of his literary career. He lives in Geneva, Switzerland.

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    Reviews for Eleven Minutes

    3.5/5

    1,596 ratings47 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A couple of lessons on sexuality, life and growth. Also highlights how different people approach the topic of sex.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Derrick Jackerby's reading is fantastic. Which makes the novel a superb listen. Paulo Coelho has gotten into the psyche of the heroine very well. Can't wait for more of his books.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I enjoyed the story. I’m guessing many others will and some few will not.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book is so intresting that i finished it on the first day, immideately after the alchemist. Paulo caulo you are a legend. Now next turn is the pilgrimage.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      It started off pretty good, but then dragged on...rather disappointing, actually. Maria was really not a character I could sympathize with.
    • 3/5
      Quick read. Interesting background of a prostetute.
    • 3/5
      Not the best book I’ve read of Paulo Coelho out there
    • 5/5
      Paulo is a true legend of life in every aspect!
    • 1/5
      It was basically a boring book. I don't think Coelho knows half as much about women as he thinks he does. I doubt that he has spent any time in Geneva except maybe the sex bars. (I lived there for three years, and would have liked a little familiar local colour.) It is also dangerous because it trivializes the very real hazards most women face when they are brought to Europe by strangers. Most of them don't have any choice about prostitution; most of them don't have legal status; most of them end up a year later with HIV, not with the money to go home and buy a farm.
    • 2/5
      In its dedication, author Paulo Coelho warns readers of his newest novel of its potentially disturbing topic, a subject he claims to be “harsh, difficult, shocking.â€? He needn’t have worried: despite writing a book mainly about sex and its secrets, the novel has already become a bestseller the world over.However, while the subject of sex may be viewed as harsh, even difficult, what is truly shocking about Eleven Minutes is how trite, how smug, how absolutely dull it all is.The award-winning Brazilian author has built himself a widespread reputation as a writer of allegories, understated tales of identity and self-discovery that serve to reveal simple truths to his readers. Through stories such as his bestseller The Alchemist, Coelho’s parables, like the fables of Aesop, are designed to teach as well as entertain.In this vein, Coelho presents Eleven Minutes as a modern fairy tale, going so far as to open his story with the phrase, “Once upon a time.â€? While sex is a decidedly adult theme, he explains that since “we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss,â€? the storybook beginning is appropriate for what follows.Maria is a young Brazilian woman who falls for the spiel of a Swiss businessman, finding herself whisked to Switzerland with the lure of fame and fortune. Through a quick series of missteps, she falls into prostitution, working independently out of a nightclub while striving to save enough money to return home.Maria, innocent yet wise, views her situation as an exercise in self-control and freedom, and begins to search for the meaning of sex with and without love. She studies books at the library, hoping to uncover a reason why the world seemingly “revolved around something that only took eleven minutes.â€?Taking its title from Irving Wallace’s novel The Seven Minutes (Coelho feels Wallace’s estimation of the time of the sexual act was too conservative), Coelho attempts through his narrative to renew the reader’s acquaintance with the sacredness of sex. To Coelho, the act itself, those brief eleven minutes, is of minor importance in a relationship of love and understanding. It only regains its significance when seen as a continuation of one’s ongoing love of another, the overall connection of two souls where the physical act of love is a logical extension, rather than the short-lived intermingling of bodies for instant gratification. A nice sentiment, but Coelho writes with such overwhelming condescension that any point becomes lost in a morass of speechifying characters and anatomically accurate descriptions of female genitalia (presumably the “shockingâ€? part of the book).His Pretty Woman-like scenario, complete with the mysterious painter with hidden depths (is there any other kind?), coupled with prose that reads like a kindergarten teacher lecturing five-year-olds, results in a story of such banality that any revelations as to the character and significance of sex are ultimately overwhelmed.Eleven Minutes reads like what it really is, a high-toned bodice-ripper with pretensions of wisdom. Coelho’s intentions may have been sincere, but his product is morally dishonest, a chastising lecture on the sexual follies of the young.
    • 2/5
      Just... Not for me. The medium that he used to tell the story is just a bit too raw.
    • 5/5
      Very interesting story of a girl with romance sex and morality.
    • 5/5
      What a great book !! I’m in love you the story
    • 4/5
      It's written in Paulo Coelho's way describing the world from first-person perspectives. Some of the areas, however, seems to be left incomplete.
    • 5/5
      As usual, I was hooked from the beginning. I don’t know if this a romantic novel, a theology or an erotic book. Haha
      Well done Paul
    • 5/5
      Riveting and rousing. Sensual and serious. Paulo writes with a flair for the reader's hidden desires. Eleven Minutes is a mindful journey back to one's self.
    • 4/5
      Sexuality, a young rural woman in the city, references to the Camino of Santiago de Compostella - a very good book.
    • 5/5
      saw the glimpse of my life in it...glad i read it!!
    • 5/5
      I loved it! I highly recommend this book to anybody!
    • 2/5
      Again, too 'out there' for me. I really want to like Paulo Coelho's books after reading The Alchemist. Which one should I read?
    • 4/5
      3.5*** Maria is a young girl form a small Brazilian town. Her first love leaves her heartbroken and she becomes convinced that she is destined to never find true love. She works in a drapery firm, where she fends off her boss. On a trip to Rio de Janeiro she meets a “businessman” who promises her fame and fortune in Switzerland. Well this went in a direction I wasn’t expecting. Yes, of course, Maria winds up a prostitute and not a famous movie actress, but she comes to understand much about herself and the world. She starts going to the library and reads up on a wide variety of topics. She opens a bank account and saves for her eventual return to Brazil, where she plans to buy a farm for her parents. She explores her sexuality in ways she never expected and thinks long and hard about the meaning of love and whether it really exists. There were several times when I thought that Coelho really doesn’t know women at all. And still, I was captivated by Maria and her journey. I had previously read Coelho’s The Alchemist and was not enthralled. At the outset of this book I felt it might just be the author’s attempt to write the same book with a female protagonist. But the strength and beauty of Coelho’s writing carried me away. I was heading for a 4-star rating, but the fairy tale ending lost a half star for me.
    • 2/5
      “Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?”Eleven Minutes tells the tale a young woman named Maria who leaves her home town in the Brazilian interior to go to Geneva, Switzerland, in search of adventure and love. She originally goes as a dancer but when this proves not to be what she had hoped for and instead pursues a career in prostitution in order to make enough money to return home. Whilst in Switzerland, Maria experiences pain, pleasure, and love and must decide the correct path for her life.Desire is a major theme throughout. Maria realises that she is different from her family and school friends and desires the to leave her own town and find adventure. She takes the first opportunity she has to visit Rio where she is spotted and given the chance to travel to Switzerland. Obviously sex is also a desire in particular by the men who pay for it but Maria also desires true love and eventually a family. Yet once in both Geneva she fails to really do anything other than wander around the city and work never leaving the city's environs suggesting that desire is more preferable to attainment.Initially I thought that this might be an expose of the white slavery trade but in the end read like a lot of moralising with a lengthy segment about the cliterous which seemed to add little to the story. Rather sections read like an extended soft-porn tale with little of the mystic qualities that the author's books are usually renowned for. Overall I found this disappointing but then perhaps it was just my male ego taking a hefty knock.
    • 2/5
      This book broke my heart!! I didn't like it!!! And to think it's a true story is devastating!
    • 5/5
      Paulo Coelho's first work that i read was the alchemist and i didnt understand that y d world went all ga-ga over paulo coelho's work. perhaps i was too young to understand the underlying meaning of the words.
      but many years now, i read another of his work. normally it takes me a very short amount of time to finish off a book but dis one i took a long time to complete. coz in order to understand the true self of this book one has to sip it like a Bordeaux..to let the flavor set in.
      i must say, it was a ponderous journey and an truly enlightening one.

    • 2/5
      I think I've just found my first book from Paulo Coelho which was a dissapointment. As a huge fan, I was expecting a wonderful story like The Alchemist, which kept me hooked the whole time.
      Unfortunately, it's not the lack of interesting characters. Maria, a brazilian woman in Géneve had a lot of potential. It's just that this book makes me SO mad because it repeats to you facts over and over.
      The story's beauty is stripped right out of it.
      What a shame.
    • 2/5
      I didn't enjoy this book, although I kept expecting it to get 'better'. Not that it had anything to do with the subject: i.e. prostitution and the protagonist's journey of 'self-discovery'. The tone of the book just seemed like a very long and drawn-out, and somewhat torturous (pardon the analogical lines) foreplay, with an slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am climatic, albeit 'happy' ending.
    • 3/5
      Another angle on an old topic. Well written.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed reading this. Very realistic, yet strangely inspiring.
    • 3/5
      Well It was okay but based on this book I am not looking forward to read any more of this authors books if I am honest. I started to get really bored after a while and that sucked cause I did like the writing. Still have 2 books here by him but I think I will give them back to my mother.
    • 4/5
      From my blogI have had Eleven Minutes on my bookshelf for 2 years, one of the first books I brought after blogging. The main thing I can say about this book is that it was thought provoking. It was hard to decide what to rate this book, the beginning I was fascinated and as it went on I began losing interest but I enjoyed the ending of the journey and how it all came together with the understanding of the clever title Eleven Minutes. This book will not be for everyone, it is exploring sexuality with spirituality undertones and may make some feel uncomfortable.What I enjoyed about this book was that it was like reading a thesis paper, very literal with artfully contrived meanings but easy enough for you to understand and have your own opinion on. Maria was looking for adventure, to become a star, find a husband and be happy, we went on the journey along with her. I thought she gambled with her life, she took risks that many do when they are young but some of hers could have caused her her life.Now that I have experienced reading a memoir when I read different novels I realise if it was a memoir I would have enjoyed it more, this is in that category. The character was inspired by someone but Paulo Coelho still put his own interpretation on the choices and consequences.If you want a thought provoking but easy read I say go for it. This is the first book I have read that I can understand every rating, if someone DNF or rated it a 1 to 5 star, I get it but it has its place in the writing world for sure. It seems like Paulo Coelho very much has a style of writing, that may seem formula like but I think it is more like a personal research paper that he allows the reader to experience and think about also.Another favourite was the opening, I would like to share.Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria. Wait as minute. "Once upon a time" is how all the best children's 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 on foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss, let's keep that beginning........More favourite "thought provoking" quotesA writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. Page 53"Does a soldier go to war in order to kill the enemy? No, he goes in order to die for his country. Does a wife want to show her husband how happy she is? No, she wants him to see how devoted she is, how she suffers in order to make him happy. Does the husband go to work thinking he will find personal fulfillment there? No, he is giving his seat and tears for the good of the family. And so it goes on: sons give up their dreams to please their parents, parents give up their lives in order to please their children; pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that should bring only joy: love."