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narrative succeeds in making the reader absorb and embody the
narrator’s mindset or consciousness and live the narrator’s
experiences through a phenomenological merging in the narrator’s
world.
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1 Coelho, Paulo. The Zahir. Trans. Margaret Jull Costa. London: Harper
Collins Publishers, 2005
2 The title comes from a tale by Jorge Luis Borges, published in his book
The Aleph. Coelho in the introductory pages of the novel states that
“according to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, the idea of the Zahir comes
from Islamic tradition and is thought to have arisen at some point in the
eighteenth century. 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. This can be considered either a state of
holiness or of madness.” P. viii.
3 In Seduction (New York: St. Martin Press, 1990) pp 37-41Baudrillard
advocates that the postmodern subject has a libido that should be
expended, a subconscious that should speak, a body that should give and
maintain pleasure, and a sex that must be put to good use.
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