Title: Aleph
Author: Paulo Coelho
Year 2011
Pages: 320
This autobiographical novel is more than just two people who become kings of their kingdoms again. It is not just a trip that Paulo Coelho made through the Trans-Siberian Railways; it is a journey through the silent distance that separates two souls who do not know that they have touched each other from eternity. To understand how everything in time and space can exist in one place and time, Aleph is what he needs.
Aleph is the story of a book tour of several countries that Coelho undertook in 2006 when he was experiencing the pain of the futility of everything he had dedicated his life to. He was agonizing over his spiritual stagnation. He could no longer bear to wake up that, despite years of searching, he could not, and probably never would, find peace. He was losing touch with himself; the soul of him. And, above all, he was tormented by the idea that he would never be the king of his kingdom again. Little did he know that this impulsive journey through Africa, Europe, and Asia would end up uniting him with a Turkish beauty who would guide him back on his way, and by the end of the 9,289 kilometers through Russia, he would have regretted, as well as treasured, the when he decided to embark on this journey. And, most importantly, this trip would have made him ‘the king of his kingdom’.
This trans-Siberian journey introduces him to the most annoying and stubborn woman he first avoids and then desires. He later finds out that she was this woman for whom he was destined to go on this tedious book tour. Hilal is not just one of the eight women he betrayed in one of his past lives, she is the woman who died because she loved him. She, along with the other seven women, persecuted him throughout his present life, and the previous ones as well, without him knowing why. He is determined to find the answer to this question in this incarnation and during this journey. The answer awaits him in a train car when he experiences Aleph with Hilal. Coelho keeps his readers interested throughout the novel by hinting at the cruelty he had faced with the eight women. However, with each clue the curiosity of the readers increases, until there comes a time when you have to try very hard not to jump to the last page.
The setting of this novel is a train and its railway car where 6 people are forced to enjoy and endure each other along 9,289 kilometers through Russia, from Moscow to Vladivostok, in the spring of 2006. And the The setting of this novel is every place on this earth during every second of the past, present and future. His characters are Coelho, Hilal, seven women and their executioners, a translator, an editor, a publisher, a shaman, tens of thousands of Coelho’s readers, and the many men and women who have lived, are living, and will live his life. live their lives in the future. To understand all this, you may need to read this novel more than once, as Coelho himself comments; “Why did it take me so long to write about this pilgrimage? Because it took me three whole years to understand it.”
We don’t have to agree with Coelho’s philosophy to like this book. Full of wisdom and spiritual insight, Aleph has the ability to show even the darkest of pessimists the light at the end of the tunnel. In short, it is an interesting book, and you will never regret reading it.