Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho Summary

Santwana Mohanty

4 years ago

The novel Eleven Minutes is one of the best novels in the market. It’s important to know the essence of the book. The book talks about a prostitute named Maria who belongs to a small village in Brazil.

Heartbroken

Maria is in the period of preadolescence. In the age of eleven, she falls in love with a guy quite older than her. Her innocent love for him was special. She loved her immensely and the love for him was gigantic. In spite of the love sadly, the guy leaves her behind.

Same way she loves another guy deeply but he too leaves her because he was unfaithful to Maria. She felt heartbroken and detached herself from the world.

She leaves her village and takes off to Switzerland leaving away her parents behind. Her father works as shopkeeper and mother holds the position of housewife. Her plan was to get away from the chaos she was going through for a long period of time.

Search for a job

After reaching to the Switzerland, she starts working in a night club (bar shop). She did the work of a waitress, sing and dance around, entertain people coming to the bar.

One night, she meets an argument with her manager then she leaves the job. A friend advices her to try in the field of modelling. She goes for small shoots, tries to enter the modelling industry.

She puts efforts to get successful in the field of modelling, tries going to small shoots or into trying on ramp walks. Sadly, she could not reach the height in modelling as she expected. One more failure! She sighs.

Maria meets an Arab who gets mesmerized by her beauty and offers her 1000 francs for a night. She accepted the offer as she was out of money. Maria is now advised by a friend named Nyah to take this ahead, as a proper profession to earn money.

Maria agrees to this and learns different steps for adapting the profession. Then she becomes the top prostitute of the era. Every other guy approached her because the kind of satisfaction she gave to the men not only satisfied their body and mind but also calms their souls.

She not only fulfils the sexual desires of the men but also talks to them, understands and tries to give a solution to the problems the men face in day to day lives. This behavior of Maria is the most attractive and appreciable.

Ralf

Her world turns upside down when she meets a painter named Ralf. She fantasies Ralf’s presence. The presence, words, essence lures Maria. She gets highly attracted by the man and considers this to be love.

But she decides not to behold the feeling as love because of the past unfaithfulness and sexual experiences. She compels herself not to do the mistake of falling in love with someone.

The girl shares her body with every man she meets but never shares her soul to anyone. She decides to keep all the memories with Ralf and walk away from him because she could not have stopped herself being with him for a longer period of time and fall in love with Ralf. The idea fails. She could not walk away from him.

Sacred Sex

She then wants to wake the internal soul of Ralf and have an inner sexual desire complete. She wanted the desire to be “The Sacred Sex”. By this she is satisfied internally and lovingly. The time period she spent with him is Eleven Minutes. These minutes were the best time of her entire life. She gave up her soul, body and whole of her to fulfil the internal desire she craved for.

Realization

The title of the book is based on this period of time which is Eleven Minutes. Sacred Sex is a sex which is mingled with true love and involves the giving up of one’s soul for the loved one.

After having sex with Ralf, she sees the god within herself and experiences self-satisfaction. She realizes there are two types of sex. First one is Sacred Sex and the other is prostitution sex where expect the body nothing else is involved.

Artistic writing

Through this it is derived that one does not only satisfy the body of each other but also dives deep into soul through the sex. The scene explained within the eleven minutes by the author is artistic. If one reads the part then he/she will understood the real essence and meaning of love in the form of sex. It is a book worth reading. The novel Eleven Minutes is a masterpiece about a Brazilian girl by the author Paulo Coelho.

The journey from a small village girl to a famous prostitute is highly entertaining and knowledgeable. The explanation is well appreciable. It is a must read recommended novel by Paulo Coelho.