Description
The narrator of The Zahir is a bestselling novelist living comfortably in Paris when his wife Esther, a war correspondent, disappears along with a friend named Mikhail who may or may not have been more than that. Paulo Coelho uses the search that follows to turn the novel inward — less a mystery about where Esther went than an account of what her absence forces the narrator to see about himself. First published in 2005, it carries the same interest in obsession and self-discovery that runs through Coelho’s other work, with the title borrowed from an Arabic word for something so present it can’t be ignored.
