The bestselling international author of THE ALCHEMIST returns with another haunting novel -- a thrilling journey into our enduring fascination with fame, fortune, and celebrity. A profound meditation on personal power and innocent dreams undone by success, THE WINNER STANDS ALONE is set in the exciting worlds of fashion and cinema. Meet the players and posers behind the scenes at Cannes -- the ′Superclass′ of producers, actors, designers and supermodels, as well as the aspiring starlets, has been stars, and jaded hangers-on. Adroitly interweaving the characters′ connected stories, Paulo Coelho uses his twelfth novel to paint an engrossing picture of a world overrun by glamour and excess, and shows us the possibly dire consequences of our obsession with fame. As the novel unfolds, the conflict between an individual′s capacity for evil and society emerges, and morality begins to unravel. ′this scintillating parable about shallowness, greed and celebrity worship... unsparingly examines the Superclass, the elite′s elite′ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ′Coelho is a novelist who writes in a universal language.′ NEW YORK TIMES