In conversation with a journalist from the Swiss magazine, L'Illustree, I described that spontaneous book-signing in Langstrasse, and he wrote a long article about it. The result was that, at a book-signing in Geneva, several prostitutes turned up to have their copies of my books duly signed. I was very struck by one of them in particular, and afterwards--with my agent and friend, Monica Antunes--we went for a coffee that turned into supper that turned into other meetings in the days that followed. Thus was born the connecting thread of Eleven Minutes.
I would like to thank Anna von Planta, my Swiss publisher, who supplied me with important facts about the legal situation of prostitutes in her country. I would also like to thank the following women in Zurich (using their noms de guerre): Sonia, whom I met for the first time in Mantua (who knows, maybe one day, someone will publish your book!), Martha, Antenora and Isabella. And in Geneva (again using their noms de guerre): Amy, Lucia, Andrei, Vanessa, Patrick, Therese and Anna Christina.
Many thanks also to Antonella Zara, who allowed me to use passages from her book, The Science of Passion, in certain sections of Maria's diary.
Finally, I must thank Maria (nom de guerre), who now lives in Lausanne with her husband and her two lovely daughters and who, during various meetings with myself and Monica, told us her story, on which this book is based.
Paulo Coelho
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More...
About the author
Meet Paulo Coelho
About the book
How I Came to Write Eleven Minutes
Q&A with Paulo Coelho
About the Author
Meet Paulo Coelho
PAULO WAS BORN IN RIO in August 1947, the son of Pedro Queima Coelho de Souza, an engineer, and his wife, Lygia, a homemaker. Early on, Paulo dreamed of an artistic career, something frowned upon in his middle-class household. In the austere surroundings of a strict Jesuit school, Paulo discovered his true vocation: to be a writer. Paulo's parents, however, had different plans for him. When their attempts to suppress his devotion to literature failed, they took it as a sign of mental illness. When Paulo was seventeen, his father had him committed twice to a mental institution, where he endured sessions of electroconvulsive "therapy." His parents brought him back there once more after he became involved with a theatre group and started to work as a journalist.
Paulo was always a nonconformist and a seeker of the new. When, in the excitement of 1968, the guerrilla and hippy movements took hold in a Brazil ruled by a repressive military regime, Paulo embraced progressive politics and joined the peace and love generation. He sought spiritual experience, traveling all over Latin America in the footsteps of Carlos Castaneda. He worked in the theatre and dabbled in journalism, launching an alternative magazine called 2001. He began to collaborate with music producer Raul Seixas as a lyricist, transforming the Brazilian rock scene. In 1973, Paulo and Raul joined the Alternative Society, an organization that defended the individual's right to free expression, and began publishing a series of comic strips calling for more freedom. Members of the organization were detained and imprisoned. Two days later, Paulo was kidnapped and tortured by a group of paramilitaries.
This experience affected him profoundly. At the age of twenty-six, Paulo decided that he had had enough of living on the edge and wanted to be "normal." He worked as an executive in the music industry. He tried his hand at writing but didn't start seriously until after he had an encounter with a stranger. The man first came to him in a vision, and two months later Paulo met him at a cafe in Amsterdam. The stranger suggested that Paulo should return to Catholicism and study the benign side of magic. He also encouraged Paulo to walk the Road to Santiago, the medieval pilgrim's route.
In 1987, a year after completing that pilgrimage, Paulo wrote The Pilgrimage. The book describes his experiences and his discovery that the extraordinary occurs in the lives of ordinary people. A year later, Paulo wrote a very different book, The Alchemist. The first edition sold only nine hundred copies and the publishing house decided not to reprint.
"Paulo would not surrender his dream."
Paulo would not surrender his dream. He found another publishing house, a bigger one. He wrote Brida (a work still unpublished in English) that received a lot of attention in the press and both The Alchemist and The Pilgrimage appeared on bestseller lists. The Alchemist went on to sell more copies than any other book in the literary history of Brazil.
Paulo's story doesn't end there. He has gone on to write many other bestselling books that have touched the hearts of people everywhere: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, The Fifth Mountain, Veronika Decides to Die, The Devil and Miss Prym, Warrior of the Light: A Manual, Eleven Minutes, and the forthcoming The Zahir.
"The Alchemist went on to sell more copies than any other book in the literary history of Brazil."
ABOUT THE BOOK
How I Came to Write Eleven Minutes
DURING MY LIFETIME, I have experienced sex in many different and contradictory ways. I was born into a conservative age, when virginity was the defining characteristic of any decent young woman. I witnessed the emergence of the contraceptive pill and of antibiotics, both indispensable for the sexual revolution that would follow. I plunged enthusiastically into the hippy era, when we went to the other extreme, with free love being practiced at rock concerts. I now find myself in an age which is half conservative, half liberal, an age haunted by a new disease resistant to all antibiotics.
It is part of a writer's role to reflect on his or her own life, and writing a book about sexuality came to be a priority with me. I tried various approaches, but all failed. It was only when I met the prostitute who would provide the connecting thread for this novel that I realized: in order to write about sublime sex, I had to start with the fear that everything will go wrong.
Eleven Minutes does not set out to be a manual or a treatise about a man and a woman confronted by the unknown world of sexual relationships. It is an analysis of my own trajectory. It took me a long time to learn that the coming together of two bodies is more than a response to certain physical stimuli or to the survival instinct. Sex is a manifestation of a spiritual energy called love.
"It was only when I met the prostitute who would provide the connecting thread for this novel that I realized: in order to write about sublime sex, I had to start with the fear that everything will go wrong."
Sex means, above all, having the courage to experience your own paradoxes, individuality, and willingness to surrender. I wrote Eleven Minutes in order to find out if, at this stage of life, at fifty-five, I had the courage to learn everything that life has tried to teach me on the subject.
Q & A with Paulo Coelho
What is the central idea in Eleven Minutes?