The Culture Club (Book: The Zahir) September 22, 2007

This is the next study evening in a series of culture studies where something from the media (e.g. a book, a film, a music album) is discussed from a Christian perspective but the evening is for people of all faiths and people of no faith at all who want to explore the message behind the media.

The session will start at 6:30pm and will end by 8:30pm latest.

There is no charge for this event.

The following two sections taken from the Damaris study guide.

Summary
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Paulo Coelho’s book The Zahir is the story of an unnamed, internationally famous author who is suddenly abandoned by his wife. Since she leaves him with no explanation for her departure, the author is mystified as well as hurt. The Zahir tracks his journey as he searches, sometimes obsessively, for answers to his questions. As the author’s wife, ‘searches for the truth, he reconsiders his life.’ The unnamed author character isn’t totally unlike Coelho, but neither is he the same person. The book does introduce some of Paulo Coelho’s own spiritual opinions and views as the answers to the unnamed author’s search for answers.

Background
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The title comes from a story by Jorge Luis Borges. It is one of the stories from his book The Aleph, first published in 1949 and revised in 1974. In the story, the Zahir is an object that has the power to create an obsession. And according to seventeenth century Islamic mythology, the Zahir is an object that traps everyone who so much as takes a look at it, even from afar, into an obsession that finally erases the rest of reality.

Paulo Coelho has become one of the most widely read contemporary authors. He is Special Advisor to the UNESCO programme ‘Spiritual Convergences and Intercultural Dialogues’. Coelho has sold roughly 56 million books and been translated into 59 languages. In 1988–89 with his second book The Alchemist, he hit the number one bestseller in 29 countries. The Zahir, which is Coelho’s twentieth book was published in 38 different languages only weeks after its release. The Zahir has also already beaten Coelho’s own records in each of the countries where it has gone on sale.

Coelho writes with a poetic and philosophical style, often using real life illustrations and symbolism. Coelho is a New Age writer and practitioner and says, ‘The material world . . . all our spiritual quests . . . we have to mix this instead of separating it, and leading a life that is not connected with the spirituality.’ At the World Economic Forum, Davos 2005, he said, ‘The real world is us.’ Paulo Coelho’s worldview can be described as monism – the view that everything is of one essential essence, substance or energy. Monism is to be distinguished from dualism, which holds that ultimately there are two kinds of substance – spiritual and physical. For more on monism, see www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism and for a Christian response to New Age belief, see www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5375.

Paul Coelho’s website is at: www.paulocoelho.com.br/engl

Previous Study Evenings
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This series continues to be popular. Previous evenings have looked at "Life on Mars" (TV series), "Collateral" (film), "Arthur and George" (book), "Moulin Rouge" (film), the Robbie Williams album "Intensive Care", "Lost in Translation" (film), "Whale Rider" (film), "The Incredibles" (film), "The Da Vinci Code" (book), the U2 album "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" and "Chocolat" (film).