THE DEVIL & MISS PRYM : A Novel of Temptation
Paulo CoelhoLIGHTLY USED, PAPERBACK
RM18.00
The Devil and Miss Prym Is Set In A Small Village About A Young, Poor Barmaid Whose Wager With The Devil Leads To A Spiritual Transformation
1 in stock
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★★ The new novel from Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist, told with his usual masterly blend of wisdom, humour, and drama ★★
A community divided by greed, cowardice, and fear. A man haunted by the ghost of a painful past. A young woman in search of happiness. Seven days, a short period during which good and evil will wage a decisive battle, and each character will decide on which of the two sides they belong.
The small village of Viscos is the setting for this disturbing fight. With the arrival of a foreigner, the entire town becomes an accomplice in a perverse plot that will forever mark the history of its inhabitants.
A stranger arrives in the small mountain village. He carries 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.
The story is about a man who sets up on a journey to discover the true face of humankind. Viscos is a very small village located in France. It has only 281 inhabitants. In the past, the place was crawling with thieves, prostitutes and criminals.
Now, Viscos is just a peaceful village where nothing much happens. Chantal Prym is a young woman. She is the bartender of the village. She wants to move away from the village and she is just laying in wait for the first chance to do so. Berta is a very old woman and she has some special powers. She is still talking to her dead husband, she can see the devil, she can read emotions and she can read the signs of trouble in storms. Berta sits still outside her house and observes the village.
One day, a stranger enters the quiet village and Berta knows that he is trouble because she can see the devil traveling alongside this man. He meets Chantal and he starts talking to her. He tells her that he is looking for some answers to his questions and that he will test the people in the village in order to find his answer.
He tells Chantal that his entire family was murdered by some bad people and that he needs to find out if people are in essence good or bad. He carries a lot of gold in his backpack and he is willing to offer the gold to the village if they are willing to kill one of their own.
Chantal must carry the message to the people and she is very sure that the people will refuse to kill someone for the gold because the people of the village are decent, nice creatures not some brutes who will kill for money. The stranger tells Chantal that he buried the gold in the woods. Chantal tells the people about the gold and after much debate they decide to kill Berta and take the gold so they can transform the village into a new and important place.
They are telling themselves that without the gold all the young people will leave the place and in the end it will cease to exist. Berta is the oldest person in the village so they decide to shoot her because she is useless. They use some sedatives and drag Berta into the woods so they can shoot her. Chantal intervenes and tells them that taking the gold and shooting Berta will prove that the people are in essence just some evil, base, greedy creatures with no morals.
She tells them about the stranger’s plan and they decide to go home and refuse the gold. Chantal is tempted to steal some gold so that she can leave the village and start a new life but the stranger and some strange circumstances are stopping her. In the end the stranger must admit that the people are neither good nor evil, the people are just people.
A novel of temptation by the internationally bestselling author Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym is a thought-provoking parable of a community devoured by greed, cowardice, and fear—as it struggles with the choice between good and evil.
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KIRKUS REVIEW :
Coelho’s latest parable (The Zahir, 2005, etc.) has vague Kafkaesque overtones as a town is challenged to murder an innocent in exchange for prosperity.
The small village of Viscos has a proud past, but at present is dying. All the young have moved to the city, leaving middle-aged shepherds and farmers and a tavern owner dependent on the occasional tourist in search of a mountain idyll. Its demise is only a matter of time as the world is in short supply of civic miracles.
When a stranger comes to town, only old Berta sees what no one else can—that his invisible traveling companion is the Devil. The stranger invites Chantal Prym for a walk in the woods and there shows her two burial spots—one contains a single bar of gold, the other ten bars. It is a test for the town, and as the tavern’s barmaid, Chantal is the chosen mouthpiece.
The village can have the gold if in three days they commit a murder. Seeking an answer to the question of evil, the stranger is betting that humanity is immoral, even in the quaint village of Viscos. An arms manufacturer, the stranger’s wife and daughters were killed by terrorists (using guns that he made), and ever since, he has had the Devil at his back and the eternal struggle between good and evil on his mind.
Initially, Chantal refuses to speak, afraid of becoming complicit in the crime, but the stranger forces her hand, and soon the whole village knows of the proposed bargain. To Chantal’s horror, the town accepts his offer (thanks in large part to the priest, who, eager for the deal to go through, offers a sermon on how the sacrifice of one saved humanity).
Now Viscos has only to decide the victim, unless Berta and Chantal, the top choices, can change their minds. Filled with Coelho’s trademark mysticism and philosophical anecdotes to illustrate a point, the brief tale is made finer by the Kafka- Shirley Jackson–derived motifs—the creepiness of a town eager for a murder offsets the author’s tendencies to spiritual pontificating.
A bit more playful than some of Coelho’s other efforts, and all the better for it.
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About the Author :
Paulo Coelho, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947, is one of the bestselling and most influential authors in the world. The Alchemist, The Valkyries, Brida, The Fifth Mountain, Eleven Minutes, The Zahir, The Witch of Portobello, Veronika Decides to Die, The Winner Stands Alone, Aleph, Adultery, and Hippie, among others, have sold over 320 million copies worldwide.
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