The Winner Stands Alone is a novel by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho, first published in 2008 under the Portuguese title O Vencedor está Só.
The story is set at the Cannes Film Festival and roughly based upon the growing rise of what the author calls The Superclass.[1] While the reviewer in the Financial Times admitted that the book's background was well researched, he complained that its plotting was weak and the writing over-indulgent: "Coelho alights on all the obvious clichés…and repeats them at inordinate length".[2]