The Prostitute as the Other: A Postcolonial Reading of Paulo Coelho’s Eleven Minutes

The present study uses the postcolonial notion of ‘the other’ to highlight the plight of a prostitute as presented in Paulo Coelho’s novel Eleven Minutes. The prostitute, treated as an object of pleasure for men, is discriminated from the common people, and reduced to merely a commodity. The manifestations of ‘the other’ in Eleven Minutes can be seen in the form of linguistic features, indoctrination, objectification, and assimilation. This study aims at exploring the ways through which a prostitute is destined to lead her life as an outsider, and the status of being a normal person is snatched from her because she is taken as a corrupt seducer. The postcolonial study of Paulo Coelho’s Eleven Minutes shows that the negative consequences of alienating the prostitute have the undesirable effects on the individual as well as the society as the whole.