Paulo Coelho

You tell the story of a Brazilian woman called Maria who works in a luxury brothel in Geneva. One night she falls in love with a much admired artist, who has fame, money and women in abundance. His problem: he is not interested any more in sex.

This person Ralf is my alter ego. I also know of times when my libido is zero. Because sex is in itself a value, for a long time I had a bad conscience about not being interested in sex. I believe that people have never before had so little sex as today. In the Internet, no search expression is entered as frequently as “sex”, and we see pictures everywhere which should make us horny, but the horniness which it produces goes into emptiness. Maria’s problem is that she is a victim of the most dangerous myth of sexuality: she believes that a woman has to have an orgasm through penetration – and this is something she cannot achieve. Maria and Ralf learn that sex is like a foreign language: if you don’t try it you also don’t learn anything. At the end they understand to perceive one’s own desire as true sexual lust.