Synopses & Reviews
A community devoured by greed, cowardice, and fear. A man persecuted by the ghosts of his painful past. A young woman searching for happiness. In one eventful week, each will face questions of life, death, and power, and each will choose a path. Will they choose good or evil?
In the remote village of Viscos — a village too small to be on any map, a place where time seems to stand still — a stranger arrives, carrying with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. He comes searching for the answer to a question that torments him: Are human beings, in essence, good or evil? In welcoming the mysterious foreigner, the whole village becomes an accomplice to his sophisticated plot, which will forever mark their lives.
Paulo Coelho's stunning novel explores the timeless struggle between good and evil, and brings to our everyday dilemmas fresh perspective: incentive to master the fear that prevents us from following our dreams, from being different, from truly living.
The Devil and Miss Prym is a story charged with emotion, in which the integrity of being human meets a terrifying test.
Review:
"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)"
Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"Filled with Coelho's trademark mysticism and philosophical anecdotes to illustrate a point....A bit more playful than some of Coelho's other efforts, and all the better for it." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"[A] spiritually intricate tale told in a simple, straightforward manner that allows all to absorb and contemplate." Library Journal
Review:
"Like all good parables,
The Devil and Miss Prym offers no conclusive answers, only hints and guesses. And it has less to do with what the stranger learns than with what we do."
Philadelphia InquirerReview:
"Coelho, who's characterized as a spiritual writer, injects a dose of magical realism into
The Devil and Miss Prym, and it suits Coelho's telling of parables within a parable and his discourses on heaven and hell, penitence and salvation, saints and sinners, God and the devil."
Milwaukee Journal SentinelSynopsis:
Coelho's parable of good versus evil relates the story of a stranger who enters a remote village 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.
About the Author
Paulo Coelho is one of the most beloved writers of our time. With sales of over 85 million copies worldwide, his books have been translated into 63 languages and published in 150 countries. He is the recipient of numerous prestigious international awards and was inducted into the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 2002. Mr. Coelho also writes a weekly column syndicated throughout the world.
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