Читать книгу The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession - Пауло Коэльо, Paulo Coelho - Страница 19

A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew – the title is from a verse in Ecclesiastes – was published at the end of April. By the second week of May, it was already number one in the bestseller lists.

The literary supplements, which have never been kind to me, redoubled their attacks. I cut out some of the key phrases and stuck them in a notebook along with reviews from previous years; they said basically the same thing, merely changing the title of the book:

‘…once again, despite the troubled times we live in, the author offers us an escape from reality with a story about love…’ (as if people could live without love)

‘…short sentences, superficial style…’ (as if long sentences equalled profundity)

‘…the author has discovered the secret of success – marketing…’ (as if I had been born in a country with a long literary tradition and had had millions to invest in my first book)

‘…it will sell as well as all his other books, which just proves how unprepared human beings are not to face up to the encircling tragedy…’ (as if they knew what it meant to be prepared).

Some reviews, however, were different, adding that I was profiting from last year’s scandal in order to make even more money. As always, these negative reviews only served to sell more of my books: my faithful readers bought the book anyway, and those who had forgotten about the whole sorry business were reminded of it again and so also bought copies, because they wanted to hear my version of Esther’s disappearance (since the book was not about that, but was, rather, a hymn to love, they must have been sorely disappointed and would doubtless have decided that the critics were spot on). The rights were immediately sold to all the countries where my books were usually published.

Marie, who read the typescript before I sent it to the publisher, showed herself to be the woman I had hoped she was: instead of being jealous, or saying that I shouldn’t bare my soul like that, she encouraged me to go ahead with it and was thrilled when it was a success. At the time, she was reading the teachings of a little-known mystic, whom she quoted in all our conversations.