Paolo Coelho의 'The winner stands alone'

Another metaphysical, spiritual, and mystic Coelho-novel. How would it be nice if this book can be categorized as such a one. However, it's nothing but a report on the reality of celebrities, exquisite banquets, and fashion, hidden underneath the façade, full of cliche and sarcastic comments. It is hard to say that this novel comes from the same author of the 'Alchemist', which of course does not mean necessarily of an absolute quality.

 

The synopsis is primitive and ridiculously illogical. A russian entrepreneur arrives at Cannes Film Festival to get back the heart of his ex-wife who is now married to a fabulously rich Middle Eastern fashion-designer. The message he's sending to her is 'destroying the world', which means nothing but killing innocent ones 'at random', whose victims, however, happen to be (except the poor street-vendor) related to the Hamid's new plan to step in movie industry.

 

The author tries, of course, to bring tension and suspension until the last page. But what this notoriously eloquent writer really has in mind is to reveal a critical look into the makings of modern society dominated by pop culture and Superclass celebrities who have made it to the top but are secretly terrified of fading into obscurity at any moment.

 

The fatal flaw of this novel is that there are too many individual independent stories weaved together. Agonizingly tedious narrations repeated again and again, where the undigested information heard from others are dumped here and there.

 

It's perhaps an irony that, during the whole time reading the book, the author himself overlaps with the poor existences in the novel to whom the author shows such a pity. A book just for a pastime. Nothing more than that.