by Pauline

Created on: February 27, 2009

"The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession" penned by best-selling author Paulo Coelho touches upon a subject experience by almost every other man on this planet: loss. It is a tale about a successful author whose wife suddenly disappeared and his struggles to cope with this sudden loss.

The entire book can be seen through the eyes of this author, who remained nameless in the story, as he narrates how he became consumed by the thought of finding his war-correspondent wife, Esther. She became his Zahir, his obsession, someone whose presence cannot go unnoticed. He is a famous author, with all the wealth and fortune his status can bring. He argues that he could find another lover just as easily. Yet he remains haunted by all the unanswered questions and the possibilities he could never explore without his wife beside him.

As he tries to find Esther, he re-examines their ten years of marriage and the possible reasons of her sudden departure. The thought of finding his wife and then trying to let go of her memory consume him, even after he has taken another lover in the form of a famous Parisian actress. He finds help in the form of a young man named Mikhail, one of Esther's friends and her possible lover. He leads the author into a journey of self-awareness, culminating in the steppes of Kazakhstan, where he eventually finds his wife and the answers he was looking for.

While "The Zahir" can be categorized under fiction, the similarities between Coelho and the narrator do not go unnoticed. There is a striking resemblance between Coelho's journey on his way to become one of the world's best-selling authors and that of the narrator. But I sincerely hope that's where the similarities end. The narrator is too self-involved and briefly touched the borders of arrogance. He seeks pleasure in the company of others and in his status as well-known author. The narrator tends to over-rationalize and lives in a world full of shades of gray.

However, no author can capture the pain and anguish of losing a loved one as well as Paulo Coelho. And in a world where one out of five marriages ends in divorce, the concepts of loss and obsession are not unheard of. "The Zahir" enables its readers to contemplate upon their own relationships and all the possibilities and tragedies that are yet to come. The book invites us to think, how far are you willing to go to search for your answers? And while our own journey may not take us to far-away places, it is still a journey worth taking.

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