by Paulo Coelho
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By The River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept: A Novel Of Forgiveness by Paulo Coelho |
by Paulo Coelho
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by Paulo Coelho
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by Paulo Coelho
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Product Description
From Amazon.co.uk
The Devil and Miss Prym is the conclusion to the trilogy And on the Seventh Day which began with By the River Piedra, I Sat Down and Wept and the hugely popular Veronika Decides to Die. Each of the three books focuses on a week in the life of ordinary people faced with a major life-changing force; be it love, death or power, it is Coelho's firm belief that "the profoundest changes take place within a very reduced time frame".
The Devil and Miss Prym sees a stranger arriving in the remote mountain village of Viscos carrying with him a notebook and 11 bars of gold. The first person to strike up conversation with the stranger is the inappropriately named Miss Prym, the hotel barmaid. Unbeknownst to her, Chantal Prym is exactly the subject the man had been hoping to find. The stranger puts a proposition to Chantal and with it gives her the power to prove or disprove a supposition that has tormented him for years--"Given the right set of circumstances every human being on this earth would be willing to commit evil". Should Chantal prove him right, all her dreams of escape to a new life would come true, but proving the stranger right would mean casting aside her deeply ingrained beliefs about right and wrong. So ensues a moral dilemma and a spiritual struggle between good and evil that will impact on everyone in the village.
This slim novel has the timeless quality of a parable. The sophisticated plot blends seamlessly with Coelho's uncomplicated language. As "the story of one man is the story of all men" so the reader is invited to think carefully about the struggle that is taking place within their own soul, to consider whether they would have the courage to stand out from the crowd. This is a truly accomplished novel from the pen of a philosopher and a master storyteller. --Sarah Crawford --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
New to the U.S. but first published in Europe in 1992, Coelho's latest (following the bestselling The Zahir) is an old school parable of good and evil. When a stranger enters the isolated mountain town of Viscos with the devil literally by his side, the widow Berta knows (because her deceased husband, with whom she communicates daily, tells her) that a battle for the town's souls has begun. The stranger, a former arms dealer, calls himself Carlos and proposes a wager to the town: if someone turns up murdered within a week, he'll give the town enough gold to make everyone wealthy. Carlos ensures people believe him by choosing the town bartender, the orphan Chantal Prym, as his instrument: he shows her where the gold is, confides that his wife and children have been executed by kidnapper terrorists (remember: 1992), and that he is hoping his belief that people are basically evil will be vindicated. Chantal would like nothing better than to disappear with the gold herself and thus faces her own dilemmas. Add in corrupt townspeople (including a priest), sometimes biting social commentary and, distastefully, a very heavily stereotyped recurring town legend about an Arab named Ahab, and you've got quite a little Garden of Eden potboiler. But the unsatisfying ending lets everyone off the hook and leaves questions hanging like ripe apples. (July 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
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