Paulo Coelho, Roll Call Again: Book Review

Paulo Coelho’s latest offering to be a piece of art, demonstrating the magic he is capable of creating with simple, ordinary language. “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.” (From the foreword of the book.)
heartbroken novels about the presumably corrupt world of today and the jaded cynicism of most intellectual writers, The Zahir is like a fresh ray of hope, because it is essentially a very positive book. The concept of The Zahir is very important here, because it puts the entire plot into perspective, which is necessary to grasp the meta-plot of this multi-layered and wonderfully complex story. It is easy to relate to the narrator and protagonist, because it is just not about a rich writer who is obsessed with his disappeared wife, it is about the human experience of learning to follow dreams, realising them, and unleashing the powerful force of truth.
The book is about facing who you are and what you are afraid of, and erasing past histories in order to create more and more love every day. It is easy to sense that the protagonist is a broad-minded individual, who is brighter than the average person. As the book goes on to describe his journey it is easy to see how he grows more spiritually aware with every chapter.
The narrative is alive and vibrant and so insightful that it is sometimes overwhelming. The narrator’s view of life and society is very difficult from the conventional and commonsensical, and hence it provides new interpretations of even the most mundane things. The symbolism is very significant in the book once the reader has grasped the basic plot; within that outline the story progresses to reveal new dimensions into the writer’s search for his wife and his initially inadvertent stumbling into the truth about his own life.
As pointed out that school stories always have been and will be cherished by generations of students. Enid Blyton’s St Clare’s and Malory Towers stories will always find readers. What they have in common is that usually they are only representative of the students’ views. But in a school there is another body of important people, the teachers.