Eleven Minutes

Maria, a bright young woman from rural Brazil, grows up believing that love inevitably brings suffering. Chasing something bigger than the life she knows, she travels to Geneva in search of fortune and adventure — and, after a series of disappointments, ends up working as a prostitute.

Determined to protect her heart, Maria keeps a journal in which she coldly dissects sex, money, and power. But an encounter with a young painter who sees her as more than a body forces her to confront the questions she has spent years avoiding: whether physical pleasure and true love can coexist, and whether she is willing to risk her carefully guarded self for the possibility of both.

Paulo Coelho's frank, provocative novel explores the tension between sacred and profane love, and one woman's search for meaning through the body.