The Fifth Mountain - Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho narrates, in his novel "The Fifth Mountain," the story of Prophet Elijah and his encounter with the widow in Sarepta, the small Phoenician city; then his retreat to the mountain after defeating all his enemies. Elijah obeys his guardian angel's commands and constantly converses with him, trying to search for a new human meaning for decision and choice. In the city of Sarepta in Lebanon, which was destroyed by the Assyrians, Elijah loses everything: his courage, the woman he loved (the widow who helped him when he was hungry and thirsty), as well as his faith after the spiritual crisis that swept over him. Here, Coelho adds a new dimension to the image of Prophet Elijah, who is depicted as strong and invincible, carrying his sword to fight enemies. In this novel, Elijah fights against his own fear, a struggle between the divine and the human, between God's will, which the prophet cannot understand despite obeying it, and his own choices as a human. But the interesting thing is that this text, in which Coelho based himself on the Torah, took place in a city in Lebanon as the stage for its events, as if the writer wants to say that history repeats itself in this country, from ancient times until today, where it paid the price for its love of tolerance, peace, and openness. In this book, Coelho raises the fundamental issues of his literary, spiritual, and philosophical world: how can we give meaning to our lives through struggle and hope? For the most intense moments of tragedy are not divine punishment, but a challenge posed to humans. Thus, Coelho gives a new meaning to punishment: what is inevitable in our lives and we believe to be fixed is in fact transient. And the fixed is what we can derive from the lessons of tragic inevitability.