In this stunning novel, Coelho's unusual protagonist sets the town a moral challenge from which they may never recover. A stranger arrives in the small mountain village. He carries with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. Burying these in the vicinity, the stranger strikes up a curious friendship with a young woman from the village - Miss Prym. His mission is to discover whether human beings are essentially good or evil. A fascinating meditation on the human soul, The Devil and Miss Prym illuminates the reality of good and evil within us all, and our uniquely human capacity to choose between them.