The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation (P.S.) [Paperback]

Paulo Coelho (Author)

Book Description

Series: P.S. | Publication Date: April 10, 2007

A stranger arrives at the remote village of Viscos, 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.

A novel of temptation by the internationally bestselling author Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym is a thought-provoking parable of a community devoured by greed, cowardice, and fear—as it struggles with the choice between good and evil.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

New to the U.S. but first published in Europe in 1992, Coelho's latest (following the bestselling The Zahir) is an old school parable of good and evil. When a stranger enters the isolated mountain town of Viscos with the devil literally by his side, the widow Berta knows (because her deceased husband, with whom she communicates daily, tells her) that a battle for the town's souls has begun. The stranger, a former arms dealer, calls himself Carlos and proposes a wager to the town: if someone turns up murdered within a week, he'll give the town enough gold to make everyone wealthy. Carlos ensures people believe him by choosing the town bartender, the orphan Chantal Prym, as his instrument: he shows her where the gold is, confides that his wife and children have been executed by kidnapper terrorists (remember: 1992), and that he is hoping his belief that people are basically evil will be vindicated. Chantal would like nothing better than to disappear with the gold herself and thus faces her own dilemmas. Add in corrupt townspeople (including a priest), sometimes biting social commentary and, distastefully, a very heavily stereotyped recurring town legend about an Arab named Ahab, and you've got quite a little Garden of Eden potboiler. But the unsatisfying ending lets everyone off the hook and leaves questions hanging like ripe apples. (July 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Internationally acclaimed author and contemporary fabulist Coelho concludes his excellent And on the Seventh Day trilogy with another provocative morality tale centered on a "week in the life of ordinary people, all of whom find themselves suddenly confronted by love, death, and power." As in By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1996) and Veronika Decides to Die (2001), the characters who populate the author's fictional village, a moribund community struggling to maintain its ever-elusive spiritual identity, are immediately thrust into the center of the timeless conflict between right and wrong when a stranger bearing 11 bars of gold and accompanied by the devil arrives in Viscos prepared to challenge the citizens of the town with an intriguing moral dilemma. Will the townsfolk succumb to temptation, confirming that man is inherently evil; or will goodness triumph over evil, proving that every human being has the capacity to make his own choices and decide his or her own destiny? These and other philosophical questions are posed by Coehlo in the same mesmerizing, lyrical style he employed in The Alchemist (1993). A natural choice for book clubs and discussion groups. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (April 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060528001
• ISBN-13: 978-0060528003
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #119,126 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The Brazilian author PAULO COELHO was born in 1947 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Before dedicating his life completely to literature, he worked as theatre director and actor, lyricist and journalist.

In 1986, PAULO COELHO did the pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella, an experience later to be documented in his book The Pilgrimage.

In the following year, COELHO published The Alchemist. Slow initial sales convinced his first publisher to drop the novel, but it went on to become one of the best selling Brazilian books of all time.

Other titles include Brida (1990), The Valkyries (1992), By the river Piedra I sat Down and Wept (1994), the collection of his best columns published in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S'o Paulo entitle Maktub (1994), the compilation of texts Phrases (1995), The Fifth Mountain (1996), Manual of a Warrior of Light (1997), Veronika decides to die (1998), The Devil and Miss Prym (2000), the compilation of traditional tales in Stories for parents, children and grandchildren (2001), Eleven Minutes (2003), The Zahir (2005)

During the months of March, April, May and June 2006, Paulo Coelho traveled to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella in 1986. He also held surprise book signings - announced one day in advance - in some cities along the way, to have a chance to meet his readers. In ninety days of pilgrimage the author traveled around the globe and took the famous Transiberrian train that took him to Vladivostok. During this experience Paulo Coelho launched his blog Walking the Path - The Pilgrimage in order to share with his readers his impressions.

Since this first blog Paulo Coelho has expanded his presence in the internet with his daily blogs in Wordpress (http://paulocoelhoblog.com), Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/paulocoelho) & Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Paulo-Coelho/11777366210). He is equally present in media sharing sites such as Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=paulabraconnot) and Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulo_coelho/sets) , offering on a regular basis not only texts but also videos and pictures to his readers.

From this intensive interest and use of the Internet sprang his bold new project: The Experimental Witch http://paulocoelhoblog.com/experimental-witch where he invites his readers to adapt to the screen his book The Witch of Portobello. You can still subscribe in this experiment!

Indeed Paulo Coelho is a firm believer of Internet as a new media and is the first Best-selling author to actively support online free distribution http://piratecoelho.wordpress.com of his work.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story old as time itself, August 11, 2006

By 

Rebecca M (Somerville, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation (Hardcover)

Once again, Coelho deftly uses his gifts as a storyteller to delve into the meat of the human condition. This "novel of temptation" is in the same vein as Coelho's The Alchemist, wherein he uses a simple narrative technique to approach some very difficult questions.
Although one might think it would be impossible to explore good vs. evil without a certain amount of rhetoric, Coelho's approach is fresh and does not resort to the usual cliches. The heroine does not shine and the villain is a victim of circumstance. In the two characters we see both sides of ourselves.
The book reads like a morality play in that the town of Viscos is Everytown and the Stranger is Everyman. Coelho has brought on the renaissance of the parable as an art form and should be commended on his ability to explore truth without grandstanding. This is a book that should humble even the most saintly of readers.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Just OK., May 17, 2006

By 

Nicole Del Sesto (Northern Cal) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Devil and Miss Prym (Paperback)

The beauty of The Alchemist was that in Santiago we had a character to love and go on adventures with. Along the way we learned as the he learned. That is what made it such a powerful book.

The problem with Coelho's more recent works is that he seems to have sacrificed character development and storyline for overt lessons. While The Devil and Miss Prym had its moments, I mostly felt like I was being preached to throughout the course of the book. I couldn't bond with the characters and though there was a story, it was weak. This book had the potential to be much more. We could have become emotionally attached to "the stranger" by experiencing his loss with him, vs. being told about it. It was hard to care about Berta's outcome because we didn't really know her. The five paragraphs of the story of Midas pretty much told the story. We've heard it before.

Overall, I found this latest Coelho fairly disappointing. I wish he would to back to the storytelling and allow the readers to derive their own message. What we learn through our own discovery is far more powerful than being conked on the head with the message.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a fable of good and evil, July 23, 2006

By 

C. Symington "millenium reader" (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation (Hardcover)

I loved this book ... am scratching my head at the some of the negative comments. Some of the most clever, thought-provoking gems are hidden in the middle section that one reviewer considered "rambling" ... I think a more careful read would elicit a different response. Coelho is known for his layered prose, and this is no exception. Given the times in which we live, the struggle between good and evil resonates heartily with those of us who so desperately ask "why?". Although this book does not definitively answer that question, its hidden wisdom is thought-provoking and genuine. I heartily recommend it.