Eleven Minutes
Eleven Minutes بقلم Paulo Coelho ... A chance meeting in Rio takes Maria to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune, yet ends up working the streets as a prostitute. In Geneva, Maria drifts further and further away from love while at the same time developing a fascination with sex. Eventually, Maria's despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness, sexual pleasure for its own sake, or risking everything to find her own 'inner light' and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love.
Author
![Paulo Coelho]()
Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 1947. He attended law school there but abandoned his studies in 1970 to travel throughout South America, as well as Europe and North Africa.
Two years later he returned to Brazil and began writing. Together with rock star Raul Seixas, he composed popular music lyrics that revolutionized Brazilian rock.
After a brief imprisonment in 1974 for alleged subversive activities against the Brazilian government, Coelho worked for five years for the recording departments of Polygram and CBS. Between 1981 and 1986 he studied with the order of RAM, an ancient, religious Spanish society. Now a literary phenomenon, he has sold over 175 million books worldwide and has been translated into 80 languages. He has received numerous international literary awards from a variety of countries and his books have become permanent fixtures on the international bestseller lists, including The Alchemist, which has spent 360 consecutive weeks on the NYT Trade Paperback chart.
He has been a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002, and in 2007 he was appointed United Nations Messenger of Peace.