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 emerges, and morality begins to unravel.