Eleven Minutes

'Eleven Minutes' tells the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heart-broken.

At a tender age, she becomes convinced that when will never find true love, instead believing that "Love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer . . ." A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune yet ends up working the streets as a prostitute.

In Geneva, Maria drifts further and further away from love while at the same time developing a fascination with sex. Eventually, Maria's despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness, sexual pleasure for its own sake or risking everything to find her own "inner light" and the possibility of sacred sex - sex in the context of love.

In this gripping and daring new novel, Paulo Coelho sensitively explore the spiritual nature of sex and love and invites us to confront our own prejudices, demons and embrace our own "inner light".