Aleph
Written by Paulo Coelho
Narrated by Mark Bramhall
4/5
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About this audiobook
Another stunning novel by the author of The Alchemist.
Aleph marks a return to Paulo Coelho’s beginnings. In a frank and surprising personal story, one of the world’s most beloved authors embarks on a remarkable and transformative journey of self-discovery.
Facing a grave crisis of faith, and seeking a path of spiritual renewal and growth, Paulo decides to start over: to travel, to experiment, to reconnect with people and the world. On this journey through Europe, Africa, and Asia, he will again meet Hilal—the woman he loved 500 years before—an encounter that will initiate a mystical voyage through time and space, through past and present, in search of himself.
Aleph is an encounter with our fears and our sins; a search for love and forgiveness, and the courage to confront the inevitable challenges of life.
Paulo Coelho
One of the most influential writers of our time, Paulo Coelho is the author of thirty international bestsellers, including The Alchemist, Warrior of the Light, Brida, Veronika Decides to Die, and Eleven Minutes. He is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Paulo is the recipient of 115 international prizes and awards, among them, the Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur (Legion of Honor). Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947, he soon discovered his vocation for writing. He worked as a director, theater actor, songwriter, and journalist. In 1986, a special meeting led him to make the pilgrimage to Saint James Compostela (in Spain). The Road to Santiago was not only a common pilgrimage but a turning point in his existence. A year later, he wrote The Pilgrimage, an autobiographical novel that is considered the beginning of his literary career. He lives in Geneva, Switzerland.
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Reviews for Aleph
502 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Absolutely beautiful and inspiring. For years I wanted to read Paulo Coelho's books, but just never got to it. And now, while still early days of my spiritual awakening, I've been guided to these beautiful work and guidance which before would not have meant so much as it does now. Thank you
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Having listened to three other Paulo Coelho books, I found this one a little disappointing due to repeated themes and repeated scenes. The main character is not particularly personable and rather arrogant which I didn't warm to. Still well worth a listen if you are new to Coelho but I'd advise starting with The Alchemist.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This was Borges's third major collection of short stories, and like all the others has appeared in several different versions with different contents - the one I read was based on the 1952 edition, containing seventeen stories and a short Epilogue. The stories pick up a good range of the famous Borges themes: there are three labyrinth-stories (one Cretan, one Arab/Persian, one a Conan Doyle parody), a couple of gaucho stories riffing off the Argentinian epic Martín Fierro, several paradoxes in which death doesn't work the way we expect it to, a couple of stories about medieval thinkers (Islamic in one case, Christian in the other), a couple of Buenos Aires crime stories with odd twists, and a monologue by a condemned Nazi war criminal that forces us to look again at any comfortable assumption that we can cut 1933-1945 out of our picture of German culture and carry on with the rest. And of course there is the eponymous Aleph - a point in which we can see all the points in the universe from all directions - and its counterpart, the Zahir - a trivial thing that we can't stop thinking about. Just about all the stories address the limitations of the narrator's - and even more the reader's - knowledge of events. Frequently, the narrator tells us that the text is incomplete and must be revised, or adds material that has come to light subsequently.Women, as usual in Borges, are mostly absent or in the background. Only the story "Emma Zunz" has a female protagonist. Borges makes a point of telling us that its plot was suggested to him by his friend, the dancer Cecilia Ingenieros, but once he's taken the step of letting a woman into one of his stories he seems to be quite happy to let her act with the same kind of limitations and autonomy he gives to his male characters. "El Aleph" and "El Zahir" both have dead, offstage women who act only as romantic love-interest for the narrator; a couple of women sneak into the end of "Historia del guerrero y de la cautiva" but we only get to see them at second-hand. Other than that, it might as well be "Billy Budd"...Coming back to these stories after many years, I was impressed again by the clarity and conciseness of Borges's writing. However complicated the mathematical, historical, philosophical or theological issues he's dealing with, his sentences never get tangled up in them - on the face of it, everything looks clear, bright and logical. It's only when we step back for a moment that we realise what an astonishing paradox we've just been tricked into accepting.Overrated or not, Borges is simply someone you have to re-read from time to time: there's no way around it!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A collection of (mostly fantasy) short stories, in Spanish. The only one of these I'd read before was La casa de Asterión, which I guess I must have read around the time I was reading House of Leaves? I enjoyed most of these, although the title story was quite tough for me to read in places (because of the pretentious vocabulary of the antagonist). I do like Borges' mathsy qualities.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heavy going in places, but lovely short stories just the same.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Some magnificently convoluted and clever stories - just what you would expect from Borges.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Though his tales are packed with philosophical ruminations, Borges is first of all an inveterate story teller, whether it's a simple tale of revenge or the history of the hidden face of God. His stories often feature a sense of uncertainty which lends them a certain immediacy, as if they were ancient legends, now distorted by time, or police reports, with caveats where the teller bumps up against the limits of knowledge--but the best of these combine a sense of both, linking the mythic to the procedural, the infinite to the particular.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Borges is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, and in The Aleph he shows his strength in a way that will leave you awestruck: the prose is so rich and evocative it's almost ridiculous, and it almost feels as a force of nature as it sweeps you along. Borges recurring themes - books, labyrinths, mirrors, myth, libraires, sotorytelling - makes the stories twist and turn and fold back into themselves and each other untill you're dizzy with delight. This truly is fiction fit for the ages.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A masterful collection which contains some of Borges' most brilliant puzzles. A particular highlight are the twin stories 'El Zahir' and 'El Aleph', two stories around the motif of obsession and madness, with a curious undercurrent of sexual longing and jealousy.