Book Impressions: Aleph by Paulo Coelho

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
What I love about the books of Coelho, as exemplary demonstrated in the most translated book of all time, The Alchemist, is their sheer power to give hope with a readable story. Whether you are reading Aleph in a plane, on a boat in the middle of the sea, in a humid, windowless room lying sick on your back, once you open the pages of the book, you are transported immediately to that trans-Siberian journey with the protagonist named Paulo. 

Everything around you changes; you get the feeling of discomfort Paulo and his companions are going through in one of the oldest & longest trains in the world, the biting cold below zero climate of Russia, especially Siberia, the vastness of the lake & the beautiful rose he recognizes as his home, his love, his wife, the transformation of the shaman, the eagle of Baikal soaring high in the sky, the beautiful Tatiana and the impromptu ritual by the frozen fountain, the tensed confrontation of Yao with one of the members of the Russian mafia, the angel playing Hilal’s violin, the timelessness of love. In other words, you own the book and the story becomes your reality. And since you have traveled with everyone and know each like your old friends, in the end, you are not the same person just as all the characters in the story are not.
Aleph is a great book. It’s for us people who persist on believing the unknown until the destiny we feel in our hearts manifest in our own reality. While we struggle and learn to read our own signs, Paulo Coelho provides us a picture, an accurate narration of what is to come and that is more than enough to keep us going. Obrigado, Paulo!

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