She has covered wars, won awards and written books; now one of Britain’s best-known foreign correspondents has found herself the muse for a novel that looks set to become a global blockbuster.
Sunday Times correspondent Christina Lamb did not expect, when she went to interview the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho almost two years ago, that their conversation would end up with her as the inspiration for his next book.
But as Coelho, one of the world’s top-selling novelists, launches his latest book in 83 countries and 42 languages, he has revealed that a conversation with Lamb in Tarbes, France, gave him the idea for his heroine.
In The Zahir, a roving, award-winning war correspondent called Esther goes missing and is searched for by her writer husband.
”I only found out when he sent me a copy of the book,” said Lamb on Sunday night. ”I was half flattered and half alarmed, thinking it could be horrible. Fortunately she is very interesting and fearless,” she said.
Coelho named Lamb as his inspiration after other women around the world began to claim they were Esther.
Among those who the Brazilian press reported as candidates were a former Chilean Miss Universe, Cecilia Bolocco, an Italian actress, Valeria Golino, and an unnamed Russian fashion designer who claimed to have had an affair with the author.
Lamb said she and Coelho, who has a cult following around the world, had a lot to talk about when they met.
”He is very interesting and very charismatic. I used to live in Brazil and I love Brazil, so we had that in common. I had just come back from Iraq. He did ask me a lot about what it was like.”
About 8-million copies of The Zahir are being printed worldwide for the launch and hundreds of thousands have been ordered, Portugal’s Correio da Manha newspaper reported on Sunday.
Lamb, who has a five-year-old son, said she recognised some of the themes Coelho had written about, especially when the difficulties of being a war correspondent and trying to keep a normal home life.
”I recognise the conflict of what it is like going off and living that kind of life and then trying to adjust to normal life at home, doing things like the school run,” she said. – Guardian Unlimited Â