Winner Stands Alone, The - Paulo Coelho

I would not say its a very good book to read but its okay. I expected more because the author is paulo coelho. This book contains story of a man named Igor, his wife left him for some reasons. Then igor starts killing people , to show his ex wife that he still love her. Many people will be killed by igor. So the story takes us to negative mindset. But the book is okay. Not very good but okay.

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I was very excited when I bought this novel but it I think it is not up to the mark, I was expecting much more than a psycho just killing people. This novel is about a Russian millionaire Igor, other important characters are Fashion magnate Hamid and actress Gabriella. The story is set at the Cannes film festival which first look interesting but it becomes boring and disturbing later on.

The lead character could not find peace and continues killing in the end. Just because Igor fails in love he wants to destroy the whole world, gives very wrong message. This novel is full of pessimism and I don't find it's ending satisfactory. This is my review you may feel different so you can give this novel a shot.

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You may not like this book so much if you have read The Alchemist, Eleven Minutes and Veronica Decides to Die. It is an average book and I also a bit slow.

It did not level my expectations as it is written by great Paulo Coelho.

Language of the book is good and poetic.

The plot of this book is loosely contrived but it gets bonus points due to its realistic description of the hypocrisy and frivolity of the upper classes.

However it is a good book but not worth your money.

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Scintillating book. Few notable quotes are:

Even If you're doing the same thing over & over, U need to discover something new, fantastic & unbelievable that went unnoticed the time before.”

It's better to emerge from a situation slightly scalded, but alive and ready to act

Book is all about fame, fashion, lust-emotion, struggle, conspiracy, politics and survival etc. Context will match even after century. This is the world we live.

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I have read Paulo Coelho books early but this book led me to disappointment. The book is a mix of lust, revenge love and murder.

After reading Alchemist this book is literally boring and time consuming. While reading the book you will have no interest in it and will be loosing patience. it is the worst book I have ever read so far from the author. strongly recommended not to buy as it is very boring.

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“The Winner Stands Alone” is a thriller which tells the enthralling stories of it’s characters- Igor the Russian millionaire, Hamid Hussain the Middle Eastern fashion legend, the lovely American actress Gabriella, hardcore detective Savoy and Jasmine the heart-breakingly beautiful young girl on the brink of a successful modeling career. Set in France at the glamorous Cannes Film Festival, the tale narrates the epic drama and tension between the characters in a 24 hour time period. Igor, extraordinarily intelligent and ‘religious’ as he is, is here to murder people in order to send the message to his ex wife Ewa that he still loves her. Incidentally, Ewa left Igor for Hamid Hussain. Gabriella, a Chicago girl is here to land a lead role opposite a big star. Savoy is desperate to solve the case of a serial killer in usually eventless Cannes. Jasmine is the young model everyone wants, but she is searching for the perfect offer.

Don’t be deceived by the size of the book, big as it looks, every single page is the opposite of boring. Coelho hasn’t dragged the story for too long and has beautifully crafted this story into a page turning thriller which holds your interest till the very last page. Coelho has mentioned many of the clichés that exist in today’s world and satirized them through his characters, mainly Igor and Gabriella. He has written the book with such skill, that it creates a sense of sympathy not only for Igor’s victims, but also for Igor himself. While many would argue that Paulo Coelho books are overrated, that is completely false. This book, is, in fact underrated and did not receive the credit it deserved. With every turn of the page it sends a shiver of thrill running down your spine.

The readers will find it an easy read because of the simplicity of the words and the language. Coelho’s description of Cannes is elaborate and makes it easier to imagine the white beaches and blue bays of the French Riviera.

This book serves as the perfect read on all days that end with “day”. I for one couldn’t put it down till I finished it.

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The Winner Stands Alone by Paulo Coelho

Book 13

Started Reading on: Feb. 14th, 2010

Finished: Feb. 17th, 2010

1st of my Paulo Coelho, have been avoiding it since couple of years due to it’s boring cover pages, but I was wrong. I should have read it before. This book is about a powerful industrialist named Igor owning the biggest telephone company in Russia. His wife leaves him for another big shot in the fashion industry. Reason for divorce: Incompatibility. But actually, she was scared of Igor’s psychotic behaviour.

When she was leaving, Igor had promised her that he would destroy a world in this universe for her till she comes back. His own philosophy, that when you want something you need to sacrifice something, some people for it. Also, that people living a messy life should rather enter their next life than stress more here. So he kills. Kills 4 different people in Cannes in a really sophisticated way. With a thought that these sacrifices will help him get his x-wife back. But towards the end he realizes it was of no use and that Ewa, his x-wife did not deserve it. So he kills her and her new husband and reaches back home safely as a Winner!!

Well seriously, I dunno how to feel n react. A crazy lover BUT the murderer of ‘so many’ is the winner!! His reasoning could be justified to a really very small extent. Though, I must say.

I think he was a clever killer for an industrialist who was ‘yeh fine’ fighting some war in Afghanistan in his early years of life. Another major thing highlighted in this book is the life of people in this industry: fashion, films, media. The naked truth of it. Far away from the glitz n glamour what we see on TV n read in news. The struggling beginners and the lucky superstars and the hollow life. This is explained with many other characters in the novel some of them who were killed by Igor at some point or the other.

All in all, it was quite insightful with a thriller of the “hoping to be” a fictitious character,

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I have read almost all the books of Paulo coelho, but this book is completely different from the other books of the same author. Why would someone kill the others to send a message for the person he love? Celebrity, fame, power and even money, are not the small things. All these things require greater sacrifices.

We all are familiar with the Cannes film festival. We watch it on T.V, read about it in newspapers and there are thousand of magazines filled with the vibrating details of festival. Yet we know nothing about the hardship and pseudo life lived by the stars.

Paulo takes you on a journey where you can peek in the backstage of the stars, directors, photographers, and skinny models.

There are four main characters in this book, and all are interlinked. At one point all stories met at one central point that arises a question, Is life worth to living and why one would ever think of being a star.

The main character is Igor a Russian businessman, who had a troubling childhood and worked quite hard to make a position in the world of business. On the one hand he is a man of principal and ethics, while on other hand he is portrayed as a serial killer, who kill so many people to win the love of his wife.

The book defines a rare question. What do we mean by the term” normal”. Does normal means a right combination of good and bad, or devil and god. At one point we all witness good and evil, so it is a constant war between good and bad.

The book defines another term the super class. Super class has nothing to prove themselves, their decisions matters, they can get away with anything including murder of the innocent. Girls even die to sleep with super classes. The only thing matter is the one yes and no of the super classes. It is just opposite of the images that we have in our mind that a wrong must be punished and right must be rewarded.

The conclusion of the book is good; you should stand for some thing not to fall for everything. Read it for the millions of questions haunted us every day or for the darker side of being celebrity. The million dollar question is all what we try to achieve in lifetime is worth full .

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I used to know a guy who hated daylight saving time. Every time it rolled around, he devoted a week to denouncing it, along with corporate greed, artificially fertilized lawns, the American highway system and white bread. When his wife bought a loaf to make the kids' lunches, he hung it out the kitchen window with a rope. He wouldn't have it under his roof.

I agreed with him on principle. There are plenty of things to dislike about our culture. His best friend hated standard time, for instance. It ate up the hours of honest working men; it was part of a system to line the pockets of electricity executives; it was - like American cars and processed frozen food - a blight on good people everywhere, etc.

These guys would have loved Paulo Coelho, although they might wonder about a novelist who deplores glitz and glamour even as he devotes more than 300 pages to evoking glitz and glamour in all its distasteful excess. Coelho takes for his subject here the Cannes Film Festival, which, in his opinion, stands on very shaky moral ground. "In Cannes, " an assistant remarks, "there's no such thing as friends, only self-interest. There are no human beings, just crazy machines who mow down everything in their path in order to get where they want or else end up plowing into a lamppost."

Coelho disapproves mightily of the human folly on display in Cannes: the unbridled ambition, the thirst for fame, the lure of haute couture and ostentatious jewelry. He hates dark glasses, because "in a celebrity town like Cannes, [they] are synonymous with status, " and he loathes cellphones, which are "leading the world into a state of utter madness." He posits a small group of people whom he dubs the "superclass, " who have all the power, all the limos, all the private jets; those who dress in high fashion(the fashion world is one of his principal bugaboos), swill champagne, drive Maybachs(the finest car) and who, if they're women, get regular injections of Botox. But he isn't fond of ordinary people either, who do silly things like wear neckties or eat three meals a day whether they're hungry or not. In short, while he compares Cannes to Sodom and Gomorrah, he's not prepared to let sinners of any social class off the hook, quoting Solomon's "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" more than once and apparently meaning it.

So. Igor, a psychotic Russian phone executive with his own private jet, comes to the film festival in pursuit of his ex-wife, Ewa, who has run off with Hamid, an Arab clothes designer also with his own private jet. Igor aims to kill a few people and notify Ewa on her cellphone, hoping this will motivate her to return to him. Over a period of about 24 hours, he does indeed manage to suffocate a young street vendor using the Russian martial art Sambo and off an important movie distributor using a needle soaked in curare, which Igor blows through a cocktail straw - this at a crowded lunch party on the beach. He spends the afternoon stabbing an independent film director and leaving a hermetically sealed envelope filled with hydrogen cyanide under an unknown person's door.

Several unsuspecting women move through this corrupt and glittering landscape: a 25-year-old model who yearns for a chance at the big time, a 19-year-old model from Africa and that murdered director who has spent her entire adult life making a film for which she seeks distribution. Through them, the author visits the worlds of moviemaking.(Will it surprise many readers to learn that the writer is the least well-paid participant in any project?) And we are told that Los Angeles is "really a large suburb in search of a city." The world of fashion is also held up to scrutiny - its sins too numerous to mention.

Yes, we do live in a sinful world where all is vanity. I'd be a fool to disagree; it would be like coming out in support of processed cheese or puppy mills. But note that at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 Harvey Weinstein bought the rights to Coelho's best-selling "The Alchemist" and will be producing it with a budget of$60 million. I imagine that Coelho was around there somewhere in that modern Sodom, probably wearing dark glasses because it gets pretty bright at the beach, and maybe even talking into a cellphone. It's the human condition, after all - all that vanity - and if you can refrain from blowing curare-soaked needles into the backs of people's necks, it isn't all that bad.

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The Winner Stands Alone is a book which should be read by each and every single who is just waiting for the right moment to live and enjoy the bliss which all of us are blessed with.This book speaks the story of every individual who is trying to reach somewhere where everybody is all alone, insecured in their career, in relationship, hollow from inside and litrally craving for peace & happiness in life.

Its the story of a winner who at the end is all alone. Win is always to be celebrated but sometimes it becomes difficult to live with it because nobody left to celebrate it with.

So those who are getting crazy for getting fame, power or money without the actual need should read this book. This story tells you the real picture behind the red carpet, crying crowd, diamonds, botox, expensive hotel suits, designer clothes and accessories, limosines, yatches, etc. Its a must read.

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Can you tell me one word which causes the present day Recession? I think the word is CHANGE. Change doesn't come free and there is no wonder to see people who called Change for the sake of Change pay the price of it. Software, Mobiles, Automobiles, yes, we know them! FASHION is a synonym to Change.

'This is not a thriller, but a stark portrait of where we are now', says Paulo Coelho in the preface to this excellent book called 'The Winner Stands Alone'. I found the novel otherwise. An excellent thriller and found the Author standing tall accepting all applauds!

The name of the book was my first attraction to buy the book along with the cover design of the book. The book has the typical Paulo Coelho stamp in the thoughts, vision and direction where it was also a wonderful page turner, a complete thriller which keeps the reader in the edge of suspense and anxiety.

Paulo Coelho's 'The Alchemist' was beautiful and simple like a sweet wind carrying nice odor from the nature's garden. In The Winner Stands Alone, the same wind turn to be a typhoon and storm west. That is correct. The typhoon's colour is black and red. It smells blood. No it lives blood.

The novel begins at 3.17am and ends at 1.55 am the next day, in Cannes, the capital of films, during the film festival. Paulo Coelho leads the readers to bright and dark corners of Cannes. Beautiful beaches, heavy streets and dark corridors. Igor, a Russian Millionaire is following a run away wife to tell her that how important she is. One who considers each person is a universe decide to end some universes to get back her love. Ewa, is now with Hamid, a world famous fashion designer from Middle East. How many murders Igor will commit to reach to Ewa? Will he get caught in the process? Does Igor manage to get back Ewa and how? (if yes) why not? (if not). Answers to these questions will satisfy the first hand reader of the book. The book is an excellent thriller in all accounts. A great detective is missing to call it as a detective novel, but read it- it is as good as a detective novel and more than that. To know, read further.

There are two kinds of dangersin the world. One we know it is danger and the other we consider as good. There are two types of enemies in the world. One, who are our enemies and we know they are enemies. Two, they are enemies but for us they are friends. The author creates a cold blooded silent villain to represent the growing danger in the world. Fashion. The silent killer who don't make a noise but approach with a soft foot and act like a friend, tempt you and take your hand only to push you to danger? Traps! – Traps of glamour and fashion - The temptations and promise – Victims don't consider 'No' can be an answer in the glittering light of hope. This is a trap.

Behind the bright lights and glittering dresses, everybody is struggling in the industry. The producers, directors, actors, models, make up artists, Agents, all falls in the same trap. (Lucky By Chance?) With hope they climb the mountains and when all at a sudden the hope finds no way forward, the next step they take is to down. Death! The friend turns your Super enemy!

My intuitions: Igor arrives straight from Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'. With him, arrives the 'Class' Theory and the murder is justified for a greater cause. Hamid arrives from The Greatest Salesman of the world, in part. . Ewa is none other than Zaher, Paulo Coelho's own book. Even when, there are similarities between the above said characters, Paulo Coelho only permitted them to live their old life for some time and after that he gives a new life with different vision and an interesting mission.

Reading Experience: Being a person who always tried to find the intentions and symbols while reading or traveling, the book was a treat! When I identified that the central character in the book is a symbol by mid way each turning page reconfirmed my assertions and magnified my satisfaction in reading. Even the other characters were representatives of a class, value or an approach. How do you compare Terrorism to Fashion? The writer gives enough clues by end to say that the characters are symbols or representatives and it makes sure that this book stands alone from other Paulo Coelho books! Death, fate, Power and despair joint hands in Igor, where Glamour and greed in Ewa, fight of conservatism and modernism in Hamid, Youth and wisdom in Jasmine, Creativity and determination in Gabriela and lot more.

Criticism: Unlike other Paulo Coelho novels, this book is one of the best book criticizing the system and calls for a change. The writer rip apart the mask each one wearing including the system. The quote in the beginning of the book says it all. 'I am not what you supposed, but far different' (Walt Witman). There had social criticism in other Paulo Coelho novels as well. However, those were not concentrated, not researched like this and were not sharp like this.

Minus points?: 1. We can hear Paulo Coelho speaking in the same tone through different characters in some places. 2. The stage for climax was set in hurry and a bit messy as well. However, as soon as the actors entered the scene, it was all normal. 3. At least in two places the sentences look continuous, say a big paragraph full. Not sure that was intentional but found odd. (May be it has something to do with the translator).

Message:Say No to a world which you do not belongs to. Let the Writers write books, film makers make films and poets write poetry. Don't fall in the trap of money, power or glamour. Follow Love. Follow your dream. Do you have a dream worth following? Check it. If you are chasing a false dream, abandon it and find new one. If you are chasing a true dream don't give your way. Life is a journey. Make sure you don't miss Love!!

When the purpose of art can be 'social change through attitude change' the book is a form of true art and the author is sure to save many universes. For one who read the characters for what they are and read the words for what they stands for, the book is nothing but a modern day CLASSICand Paulo Coelho Stands tall!

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