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Book Description

Over the last half of century interferon (IFN), originally discovered as an antiviral protein, has developed from an inhibitor of viral replication to a major force in the antiviral response. Initially studied only by few virologists, IFN was generally considered as a poorly defined protein of limited importance. The development of molecular techniques lead to the identification of a family of IFN genes and has shown an unexpected complexity of type I IFN genes and their expression. Presently, some aspects of the of the pathogen mediated induction of IFN gene expression are understood at molecular level, while others are still at the stage of description. Both Toll like receptors and cytoplasmic RNA helicases were shown to recognize viral nucleic acids and the basis of a distinct recognition of viral nucleic acids from the cellular ones are emerging. Important insights on the virus recognition entity, leading to the expression of interferon and interferon induced genes, have been made in the recent year, which are challenging the accepted concept of the critical role of dsRNA in IFN induction. The availability of genetically modified mice that are lacking either essential components of the interferon inducing pathway, or interferon signaling pathway fully confirmed the original idea, made soon after its discovery, that interferon is the first cellular defense against viral infection.

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Better books in the world than this one

My first one star review

Not as good as other work by Coelho.

A Novel of Egotism

Not Coelho's at his best

The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession (P.S.)
Paulo Coelho
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Coelho, Paulo | ( C ) | Authors, A-Z | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0060832819
Release Date: 2006-07-03

Book Description

The narrator of The Zahir is a bestselling novelist who lives in Paris and enjoys all the privileges money and celebrity bring. His wife of ten years, Esther, is a war correspondent who has disappeared along with a friend, Mikhail, who may or may not be her lover.

Was Esther kidnapped, murdered, or did she simply escape a marriage that left her unfulfilled? The narrator doesn't have any answers, but he has plenty of questions of his own. Then one day Mikhail finds the narrator and promises to reunite him with his wife. In his attempt to recapture a lost love, the narrator discovers something unexpected about himself.

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Set in Paris and in the enchanting landscape of central Asia, this new novel by the author of the international bestsellers The Alchemist and Eleven Minutes follows the journey of a man obsessed with finding the wife who left him without an explanation.

The narrator of The Zahir is a bestselling novelist who lives in Paris and enjoys all the privileges that money and celebrity bring. His wife of ten years, Esther, is a war correspondent who, despite her professional success and freedom from the conventional constraints of marriage, is facing an existential crisis. When she disappears along with a friend, Mikhail, who may or may not be her lover, the authorities question the narrator. Was Esther kidnapped, killed, or did she simply abandon a marriage that left her unfulfilled? The narrator doesn't have any answers but he has plenty of questions of his own.

Then one day Mikhail, the man with whom Esther was last seen, finds the narrator and promises to take him to his wife. In his attempt to recapture a love lost, the narrator discovers something unexpected about himself.

A haunting and redemptive story about the dark side of obsession, The Zahir explores its potential to both fulfill our dreams and to destroy them. It is also a thoughtful meditation on faith, celebrity, marriage -- and their relationships to freedom and creativity.

Customer Reviews:

Better books in the world than this one.......2007-08-21

If a zero rating were possible here, this book would warrant it. The author biographical notes indicate that Coelho has sold 56 million copies of his books. On the evidence provided between the covers of this one I can't imagine why: it's hardly artfully written and doesn't have a plausible plot. I guess millions of people around the world eat french fries; they're hardly a complex, tasty gourmet food worthy of rave reviews either. Mass consumption doesn't automatically equal 'must-have' or 'of value'.

The novel features a best-selling writer as a narrator (who incidentally whines about critics trashing his work; Mr Coelho must be feeling insecure) whose wife disappears. The narrator claims that his missing wife is his obsession, his Zahir, yet replaces her with another woman that he also claims to love, and has affairs on the side. I think the only obsession he has is with himself and his own self-importance.

Throw in an epileptic that sees visions, some hokeyness about letting love into your life in a pure energy form, a journey across the steppes, and the narrator explicitly explaining all his life revelations along the way so you don't miss the 'profound messages'; viola, you have one unconvincing story.

I hope the book reads better in the original Portuguese than it does in English. The English translation is dry reading; there's certainly no poetry in the writing, just the verses quoted before the title page.

My first one star review.......2007-08-01

God, how I hated this book! It starts out OK: a best selling but critically disliked author (the narrator of the book) and his wife become too complacent in their marriage and start taking each other for granted. The wife splits, and, after some serious soul searching, she becomes the author's "Zahir" (which means "obsession" or "great desire." The word is repeated in the book about a thousand times just to clue us in on the profundity of the concept). He then commences on a spiritual quest to get her back (which, at one of the novel's low points, includes frolicking with insightful street beggars). Less than 100 pages in, the book devolves into a silly philosophical surrealistic dissertation on the "energy of love." I swear, it almost reminded me of that dreadful early 70's musical "Godspell," except without the soundtrack. OK, I get it! We should try to love each other! Why not write a three page essay instead of this la-la land book?

To me, "The Zahir," is an author out-of-control with his self-indulgent egoism. I'm wondering if Paul Coelho believed he would start a movement based on the "energy of love," kind of how Ayn Rand started "Objectivism." Fortunately, the type was large and the chapters short -- otherwise I would never have finished the book.

Not as good as other work by Coelho........2007-07-25

Did you know that the distance between one rail track to another is exactly 4 feet and eight and a half inches? Is the distance between our relationships always such a constant?

The book is about the narrator's search for his missing wife, Esther. He seeks out Mikhail, the man who may be Esther's most recent lover and with whom she was last seen. Mikhail introduces the narrator to spiritual seekers and he embarks on a life changing journey.

The book is about love, marriage, and separation. Like other Coelho books, there is a lesson to learn. However, I did not find this book to be as good as The Alchemist or The Devil and Miss Prym, and certainly not as fast a read. However, people in relationships and those going through separation will probably relate more to the book and thus enjoy it more while picking up some useful lessons! There is no denying that Coelho is a great teacher.

An interesting fact of life he mentions is that many of us have died while living! This statement moved me, and each of us will find a different meaning in it according to how we have lived our life.

A Novel of Egotism.......2007-06-14

This is not the best I have read from Paulo Coelho, but as always I know I'm going to remember some of the profound messages it portrays. I'm still thinking about `Eleven Minutes' some two years on, and `The Alchemist' was apparently life-changing for many of the 27 million who have read it (so far). Of course the writer has his critics but I wonder if some of those are on his wavelength, or even have the capacity or desire to be. In The Zahir, a man with no name wonders why his wife of ten years has left him, and as is the case with most of Coelho's novels, a pilgrimage begins which leads the central character to question his or her purpose in life and the things that truly matter. In this novel the unnamed man is a very successful writer, which I personally found uncomfortable because I was constantly wondering if this tale was partly or even wholly autobiographical; Coelho acknowledges that at least one of the characters is based on a person with the same name and nationality, and the book itself is dedicated to the author's wife Christina - could she be, in fact, the Zahir who becomes something of an obsession in the unnamed writer's life? Personally I found this lingering doubt to be a distraction, particularly because the writer speaks somewhat arrogantly if not egotistically about his career and achievements, and I would hope that this differs from Coelho in real life.

Despite the theme of love and its eternal energy that we are indirectly urged to embrace, the central unnamed character gives the impression of a man with somewhat shallow feelings; he has been married three times or more and even in his latest marriage he concedes to occasional acts of infidelity which in my view serve to undermine his credibility as a man worthy of the woman he is married to. He finds new `love' not long after his wife's unexplained disappearance and continues to flirt, or invite sexual encounters, so I for one felt unattached to his emotional dilemma.

In spite of that, there was plenty to make me think about some of those intellectual, philosophical and spiritual issues that seem to occur in most of Coelho's work. Some of his observations border on the cynical, for example his compartmentalisations of relationships in high society or simply between a husband and a wife, the observations made have a touch of condescension about them yet maybe they are more accurate than some of us would like to think. Central to this line of thinking is that age-old question : `What is love?' and to an extent the author tries to offer his ideas of what love is and more often his opinions of the hypocrisies and denials many of us live within during our married lives. As in Eleven Minutes he dehumanises love (or at least our popular conception of it) and presents us with a picture of the love that we can find at the end of a spiritual tunnel, a painful one that we seem to have to traverse in order to find it. It's a difficult subject to approach and is bound to attract criticism but the open-minded reader will find it interesting and perhaps worth pursuing. I don't think I read anything categorically new in The Zahir but it was elegantly written and is a worthwhile read for anyone looking not so much for the meaning of life, but the purpose of it, and the things that really matter.

Not Coelho's at his best.......2007-06-11

At the beginning it seems you are up to another great Coelho's novel, but then cohesion is lost, and so are we. The story begins to hop from one theme to another,..... the structure is lost. Still, you will find the usual capsules of inspiration, but isolated.

This makes me wonder why so many people around the world loves his novels. As Coelho acknowlegdes within the novel, he manages to write some little provocative ideas, that somehow have a different meaning for each reader, but inspirational, based on our own life experiences and troubles, and voilà...!, the recipe for success lies on the readers interpratation and inspiration they get from these little capsules of philosophy you find scattered in Coelho's novels. The Zahir at least let me understood why poor novels such as The Alchemist achieved such a success among adults (even though I think is great for pre-teens).

You will be better off reading Eleven Minutes, definitively a real novel.

The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession (P.S.) / Zair

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The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession (P.S.) / Zair
Paulo Coelho
Manufacturer: Sofia
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: B000QX9PW0

Product Description

Zair - eto kniga-ispoved' cheloveka, u kotorogo bessledno ischezaet zhena. On perebiraet v ume vse vozmozhnye varianty - pokhischenie, shantazh, - no tol'ko ne to, chto Ester mogla ujti, ne skazav ni slova, chto ona mogla prosto razorvat' ikh otnosheniya. Ona razdrazhaet ego kak nikto drugoj, no vmeste s tem vyzyvaet chuvstvo nepreodolimoj tyagi. Kakuyu zhizn' ona teper' vedet? Budet li ona schastliva bez nego?Vse ego mysli zanyaty ischeznoveniem Ester. On znaet, chto smozhet spravit'sya so svoej oderzhimost'yu, tol'ko esli emu udastsya razyskat' svoyu zhenu.

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The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession
Paul; Costa, Margaret Jull (Translator) Coelho
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000O89L9E

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The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession (P.S.)
Paulo Coelho
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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