Author Paulo Coelho's next novel 'The Spy' is based on the imagined life of Mata Hari, the courtesan who was accused and executed for treason, a hundred years ago, publishers Penguin Random House India said.
Mata Hari was a Dutch dancer who shocked and delighted audiences during the first World War, and she became a confidant to some of the era's richest and most powerful men. She dared to liberate herself from the moralism and provincial customs of the early twentieth century, but ultimately paid for it with her life.
Books written by Coelho include 'The Alchemist' among others have sold 200 million copies in 160 countries including India.
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Susan Sandon, Managing Director of Cornerstone, has acquired the rights to the new novel by Coelho. Sandon, acting on behalf of Hutchinson at Cornerstone, Hamish Hamilton in Australia and New Zealand, and Penguin Random House India, struck a deal for an undisclosed figure with Monica R Antunes at Sant Jordi Asociados.
'The Spy' is set to be published this November simultaneously with Knopf in the US.
Meru Gokhale, Editor-in-Chief, Penguin Random House India said "I am delighted to be publishing Paulo Coelho again. He is such a widely loved and respected author in the subcontinent, and I truly believe that the captivating story of Mata Hari, an extraordinary woman ahead of her time, will resonate deeply with readers in India."
As Mata Hari she waited for her execution in a Paris prison, one of her last requests was for a pen and some paper to write letters.
Over the past twenty years, MI5 in the UK and Germany and
Holland have released their files on Mata Hari, and it provided Coelho with a trove of information as he was researching his novel.
"I ended up with a mountain of documents," Coelho said, "but also with a question: What did Mata Hari write in those letters? And how was she caught in so many traps, set by both friends and enemies?"
Using first-person narrative, Coelho reimagines Mata Hari's life through her final letter, which was written the week before her execution. There, from prison, Mata Hari reveals the choices she made in pursuing her own truth - from her childhood in a small Dutch town, to her unhappy years as the wife of an alcoholic diplomat in Java, to her calculated and self-fashioned rise to celebrity in France.
"Mata Hari was one of our first feminists," Coelho said, "defying male expectations of that time and choosing instead an independent, unconventional life. There are lessons we can draw from her life today, where accusations by the powerful still cost the innocent their lives."
At her death by firing squad - as she stared down her executioners and refused to be blindfolded - Mata Hari famously said, "I am ready." Coelho says of that moment, "her only crime was to be an independent woman.
