Author(s): Paulo Coelho (tr Margaret Jull Costa)

Fiction.

Eleven Minutes tells the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heart-broken.

At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that 'Love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer...' A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune yet ends up working the streets as a prostitute.

In Geneva, Maria drifts further and further away from love while at the same time developing a fascination with sex. Eventually, Maria's despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness, sexual pleasure for its own sake or risking everything to find her own 'inner light' and the possibility of sacred sex