Amayel’s Notes

PAULO COELHO: The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation.

The book explores the parameters of Good and Evil. If you had a choice, between good and evil, knowing the satisfation from evil can be greater sometimes and more tempting. What if all barriers and punishments, guilt and remorse were to be removed, which would you choose? Are human beings good or evil in essence. I’ve asked myself the question many times given my field of study (Conflict Resolution) and you come ccross the greatest of evils but also, men in the face of adversity, that defy all kinds of logic and act for the greater good of all at their own expense. So this book was only appropriate to read after I watched that Congo documentary on rape.  

What is the state of nature? Bestial, short and brutish as Hobbes describes in the LEVIATHAN and needs society to keep him in check. Or, is it rather as Rousseau claims that man is a noble savage, good at the state of nature but gets corrupted by society… A clear answer? of course I don’t pretend to know now, but  at least the book makes you go beyond usual reflection and rhetoric on the subject.

The only issue with Coelho is that in reading his books from oldest to newest, he seems to have lost some of his magic by sacrificing character development for teaching lessons. Though his writing makes you think, it also teaches you the lesson right there rather than letting you think it through and figuring it out on your own. We do not all learn the same lessons from experiences in life. This one occurence might teach me something, and another thing totally different to someone else.

A community devoured by greed, cowardice, and fear. A man persecuted by the ghosts of his painful past. A young woman searching for happiness. In one eventful week, each will face questions of life, death, and power, and each will choose a path. Will they choose good or evil?

In the remote village of Viscos — a village too small to be on any map, a place where time seems to stand still — a stranger arrives, carrying with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. He comes searching for the answer to a question that torments him: Are human beings, in essence, good or evil? In welcoming the mysterious foreigner, the whole village becomes an accomplice to his sophisticated plot, which will forever mark their lives.

Paulo Coelho’s stunning novel explores the timeless struggle between good and evil, and brings to our everyday dilemmas fresh perspective: incentive to master the fear that prevents us from following our dreams, from being different, from truly living.

 

Overall, I give the book a B. not his best work to date. The Alchemist and the Zahir were better in my view.

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Adil Salahi’s compelling biography traces the life of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) from birth and childhood in the Arabian desert to the triump of Islam and its gaining a permanent hold on Arabia. The author sets this against a fascinating historical backdrop, making a careful analysis of events and relating them to the life of Muslims today.Today, Islam provides perhaps the most important trend influencing Arab and Islamic thinking throughout the world. Adil Salahi looks at Islam from this wider perspective with both the Muslim and non-Muslim readers in mind. Muslims will add to their understanding of their own faith and non-Muslims will understand the passionate love Muslims have for their last Prophet (pbuh)    

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Feb 11th 

*IDENTITY AND VIOLENCE: The Illusion of Destiny by Nobel Prize Winner, Economist: AMARTYA SEN. In this sweeping philosophical work, the author proposes that the murderous violence that has riven our society is driven as much by confusion as by inescapable hatred. Challenging the reductionist division of people by race, religion, and class, Sen presents an inspiring vision of a world that can be made to move toward peace as firmly as it has spiraled in recent years toward brutality and war.

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Very interesting reading. Though, once again, not Amartya Sen’s best book. He does seem to focus quite a lot on Islam/Hindu world, but makes a perfect case for the ethnocentric view the West has on the rest of the world and Samuel Huntington’s so called “Clashes of Civilization”. The book is also very repetivtive. In the end what took a couple of hundred pages, could have been summarized into just half of that. The theory about human beings having multiple identities (both self constructed and imposed by others) is merely a new theory and instead of dwelling on the theory itself, adding to it would have been much more productive.

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Feb 2nd 

 *Public International Law in a Nuttshell
(by Thomas Buergenthal)

Not as exciting as the previous reading. Semester has started, and this is what i’ll have to deal with for a semester:Sources of intl Law, Intl Organizations, Intl Humanitarian Law, Contentious Jurisdiction…etc… There is a reason why lawyers get paid so much! Et dire que I contemplated being a lawyer at some point! Chills!

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Maybe I spoke to soon. Law was is so interesting. Reading the book. It’s all about righteousness and Im loving my Intnl Law class right now! Very interesting reading, but maybe not if you’re just reading for fun!

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Jan 25th

* The ZAHIR, A Novel of Obsession by Paulo Coelho.

“According to Jorge Luis Borges, the idea of the Zahir comes from Islamic tradition and is thought to have arisen at some point in the eighteenth century. Zahir, in Arabic, means visible, present, incapable of going unnoticed. It is someone or something which, once we have come into contact with them or it, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either a state of holiness or of madness.” Faubourg Saint-Peres Encyclopedia of the Fantastic (1953).

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In the end, it is a very interesting book though I was expecting more of it. Maybe, i built up expectations myself. It’s Paulo Coelho after all, same guy who wrote The Alchemist, which I was very impressed by. The author is looking for his wife who has left him without any explanation. Hence, his new found obsession for her makes her: His Zahir. The book talks of love, going in search of a lost love and how human beings try to stay in monogamous relationships by defining rules for marriage, knowing full well, human beings are polygamous by essence. It entices you to look at the bigger picture and reject society’s norms that were imposed hundreds of years ago. So long ago in fact, that we do not even know the purpose of our repeated actions, we just duplicate for the sake of tradition.

Worth reading, Not his best!

M.