الزهير هي نطق آخر للكلمة العربية الظاهر والتي تعني الشئ الواضح أو الذي لا يمكن المرور دون ملاحظته. تدور القصّة حول الراوي صاحب الروايات الأكثر رواجاً، وبحثه لزوجتِه المفقودة. يتمتّع بطل الرواية بكلّ الامتيازات ومن ذلك المال والشهرة ولكنه مشكوك فيه من السلطات والصحافة بسبب الاختفاء الغير قابل للتوضيح لزوجته من بيتهم في باريس. يستكشف كويلو معاني مختلفة للحب والحياة من خلال الرواية(ويكيبيديا)
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كعادة باولو كويليو أبهرني في (الزهير) لكنه فاجأني في النهاية لم تكن مناسبة لمستوى الرواية وما تحويه من جمال .وبشكل عام رائعة بطاقة الحب و لأنها تعطينا مهلة من الوقت نختلي بأنفسنا ونفكر أين وصلنا وماذا فقدنا؟ فهي تتحدث عن قيمة الشيء عند فقدانه وما يشكله من هاجس للأنسان فتجعلنا نتعمق أكثر بحياتنا كي نفهمها لنعرف كيف نعيشها. تشبه الخيميائي بفلسفتها لكنها هذه المرة رحلة لاكتشاف معنى الحب .

(العذاب يحدث عندما نرغب في ان يحبنا الاخر بالطريقة التي نتصورها وليس بالطريقة التي يجب ان يتجلى الحب فيها حرا بلا قيود ليرشدنا بقوة ويحول دون توقفنا)
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(نعيش معتقدين اننا نعرف ماهية الحب .. لكننا سنفتقر دوما الى الشجاعة لمواجهته على حقيقته )،
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الحب قوة غير مروَّضة عندما نحاول السيطرة عليها تدمرنا عندما نحاول اسرها تستعبدنا عندما نحاول فهمها ترمينا في الضياع والارتباك

يخبرنا الكون متى نخطىء عندما ينتزع منا أغلى ما لدينا .. أي اصدقاءنا

wow. do you know how and when i discovered this author? at the airport bookstore- at la guardia, the american terminal-the one next to the dunkin donuts/baskin robbins that one must ignore... you know how difficult it is to find something worthwhile to read in the airport bookstore, and i was about to buy something else- this book was in the low corner pocket and i saw it. the cover, and the title, are enticing, but could have been just over the top. but i usually test drive books buy opening them up, right in the middle, and just reading a paragraph. ah, love. i was so lucky.

looking forward to continuing with this author.

This book was not of the same quality as Alchemist but still presented some noble and elevated concepts as presented in all of paulo's books and perhaps the reason I read his books is that they always tend to feature some sort of spiritual quest. There is also a aspect of Sufism in Paulo's books which make them more eminent.

The unnamed narrator of this story is a writer whose wife, Esther, a war correspondent leaves him suddenly without any information or trace of leaving. When she disappears, he is disturbed by the mystery of what has happened. Has she been killed, kidnaped, or left him for another love. The narrator starts his struggle to find the reason of Esther's disappearance and eventually he realizes that she is the one who fills his life with meaning.

Coelho has not created a master work on the level of Alchemist but still there are some insights on courage needed to reach destiny, risks and possiblities of life and rewards of forgetting personal histories.

باولو كويلو العجوز العابث ههههههههه

رغم كلّ شيء أحببته أكثر لأنه كان صريحا لأبعد درجة

It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over. Slowly, I began to realize that I could not go back and force things to be as they once were: those two years, which up until then had seemed an endless inferno, were now beginning to show me their true meaning.

This book was nothing like I expected. The back description was misleading - as a novice traveller I saw that the narrator of the book was going to go through "Spain, France, Croatia" etc in order to find the love of his life. Do not be fooled, there is little to no description of these places. In fact, there is no description of Spain at all. Thoroughly disappointing.

Besides that the book itself was... interesting. I admit it is a much different story than I have ever read and I was given some new ideas and thoughts. However I did not find the end fulfilling nor did I feel a great connection with the main character.

Това е единствената книга на Коелю, която съм оценил толкова високо. Защо ли - това остава мистерия, не си спомням нищо от нея…

لم يكن الأمر رواية قدر أنك كنت تجالس صديق يروي لك ما مر ب�� وما يفكر فيه ويحسه، ليس بالضرورة أن أتفق مع كل الأفكار التي أوردها ولكن كان هناك فلسفة تحترم في الحقيقة ..
-الظاهر والتحرر منه
-طاقة الحب
-عبثية الحياة
-نسيان الماضي والخبرات لنكشف عن حقيقة ذواتنا ورغباتنا
القضايا الأربع التي تناولها باولو كويلو بحرص في عمله ذاك، ولكن الفكرة الأهم التي توصلت إليها هي أن الناس دون إيمان بفكرة وقضية وشعور بقيمة هم موتى.. عبثية الحياة تنبع من ذلك وعند عرض أن التوجه إلى طاقة الحب هو الحل لتحيا حياة سعيدة أو على الأقل ليست بائسة تتضح قيمة أن تكون مؤمنًا ولديك مرجعية، ووجود مرجعية لدى كل الأفراد وأن السير بلا مركز تيه.
وأن تكون مرجعيتك إسلامية تتضح فيها قيمة الحياة وحمل فكرة شيء يبعث على الامتنان خاصة إن كنت توصلت لذلك ببحث وقناعة وفكر وليس مجرد اتباع وانسياق.

1 star. Self-congratulatory, conceited wankery. Only earns it's 1 as the prose was easy to read and well written for what it was. If you would like to read a book about how fantastic Coelho thinks he is, this is for you.

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By demand, my blog post on this book:
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I am just going to come out and say it.

Paulo Coelho is a knob.

I dislike this man, his opinions and his writing. I have read The Alchemist and the The Fifth Mountain in the past and have felt that they were completely over rated. Then a friend links all these "insightful" quotes from him all the time on Facebook. And then there is this article from earlier this month. But all of these were forgivable. Until I read this book. This book lead me to one conclusion.

Paulo Coelho is a complete wanker.

This book, The Zahir, is about an amazing author who is famous, incredibly successful with the ladies, intelligent, accomplished, and did I mention a brilliant writer? Maybe I need to tell you again how good a writer the author is. He is married, but has many girlfriends as he is incredibly attractive, and his wife who is a journalist goes missing. He mopes for a bit, while being a brilliant, amazing writer, but then gets an actress girlfriend. He then gets approached by a man who knows where his wife is, and he has to rediscover himself, by writing another ground-breaking book and some other stuff, before he can go find her. But the actress stays with him until he leaves, because he's great.

In case you forget how wonderful he is, he points out randomly how many languages (nearly all the languages in the world) he has been translated into. The books themselves, while wonderful, are not him or his ideas. 'Everything that's written in my books is part of my soul...' (p101). Yeah right. Get your hand off it.

Also he mentions the Zimbardo prison experiment at one stage, because he can. Why? No idea. It wasn't important or necessary. It was in fact completely out of place, not to mention wrong, and seemed to be mentioned to show off how intelligent he was.

My "favourite" part, was after he came home from spending all night out wandering Paris with the "Tribe" and then come home and didn't want to turn on the tv because they had "run out of things to talk about" so were covering a story of a rebellion in Haiti. So he goes on this whole rant about how is a rebellion important to him as a rich, incredibly successful author in Paris! Who cares! I just wanted to slap him the narrow minded prick! Urgh.

As well as all of this he seems incredibly unhinged as well. He screams at his girlfriend after being out all night with the Tribe, mentioned above, and she doesn't ask him where he was. So therefore as she is not jealous (not interested, jealous) he screams at her for not loving him any more. Besides the fact he has been moaning on about his wife who he loves who has left him for the whole book. I was beyond loving him at p5, no wonder the girlfriend seemed to have had enough by p200. But she hadn't really. She really thought he was great. You know why? Because this unnamed author is fucking fantastic, just ask him.

Why did I finish it? Because I wanted to find out what happened to his wife and girlfriend as I liked them (not worth it, it ended all about him), it was only 270pp, and it was orange (for a rainbow challenge). It gets 1.5 stars as it was well written for self-congratulatory masturbation. Actually, no. After writing this, 1.

Knob.

For more reviews visit http://rusalkii.blogspot.com.au/

I kept reading it and finished it in a short time.... this means that i love it.... It helps you understand the real meaning of life...how can you reach your goals... "the energy of love" which i believe in

Het knappe van Coelho is dat hij oude verhalen en wijsheden weet om te zetten naar leesbare romans voor onze tijd. Deze gaat over de liefde. Daar waar hij refereert aan zijn eigen ontwikkeling met zijn zo kenmerkende belerende toontje begint het bij mij te jeuken. Is dit het etaleren van ‘kijk eens wat ik allemaal heb doorleefd’ of toch meer een oprecht deelgenoot willen maken van manieren om de liefde levend te houden, zodat mensen daarmee hun voordeel kunnen doen?

دائما تجعلك أعمال باولو كويلو تحس انك تقرأها في الوقت المناسب تماما وانها كتبت كرسالة لك