Arts: novel writer: Paulo Coelho, world-renowned Brazilian author of The Alchemist, 20th anniversary

Paulo Coelho—Live & Taking Calls: The iconic Brazilian writer returns to Syndicated News to talk with Ruthie DiTucci about the 20th anniversary edition of his allegorical novel The Alchemist, which has sold 65 million copies—and holds the Guinness World Record for most translated book by a living author.

Wikipedia says -- Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.^[1] He attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded with "My dear, your father is an Engineer. He's a logical, reasonable man with a very clear vision of the world. Do you actually know what it means to be a writer?"^[1] After researching, Coelho concluded that a writer "always wears glasses and never combs his hair" and has a "duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation," amongst other things.^[1] At 17, Coelho's introversion and opposition to following a traditional path led to his parents committing him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20.^[2][3] Coelho later remarked that "It wasn't that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn't know what to do... They did not do that to destroy me, they did that to save me."^[4]


At his parents' wishes, Coelho enrolled in law school and abandoned his dream of becoming a writer. One year later, he dropped out and lived life as a hippie, traveling through South America, North Africa,Mexico, and Europe and becoming immersed in the drug culture of the 1960s.^[5][6] Upon his return to Brazil, Coelho worked as a songwriter, composing lyrics for Elis Regina, Rita Lee, and Brazilian icon Raul Seixas. Composing with Raul led to Paulo being associated with satanism and occultism, due to the content of some songs.^[7] In 1974, Coelho was arrested and tortured for "subversive" activities by the ruling military government, who had taken power ten years earlier and viewed his lyrics as left-wing and dangerous.^[4] Coelho also worked as an actor, journalist, and theatre director before pursuing his writing career.^[7]

In 1986, Coelho walked the 500-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, a turning point in his life.^[5][8] On the path, Coelho had a spiritual awakening, which he described autobiographically in The Pilgrimage.^[9] In an interview, Coelho stated "[In 1986], I was very happy in the things I was doing. I was doing something that gave me food and water -- to use the metaphor in "The Alchemist", I was working, I had a person who I loved, I had money, but I was not fulfilling my dream. My dream was, and still is, to be a writer."^[10] Coelho would leave his lucrative career as a songwriter and pursue writing full-time.'

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I leave the reader to find her/his way to this Catholic writer's fuller biography, his blog, his website, and his Twitter account [if you so desire].

I heard this fabulous man, the top echelon novelist now 63 years old,  in conversation  on BlogTalkRadio, however, unfortunately I coud not get the re-broadcast widget for this particular interview conversation with the author of  The Alchemist, his world famous 2nd of many novels enjoyed in the original Portuguese of Brazil and in translation around the world, The Alchemist now being celebrated for its 20th Anniversary.

BlogTalkRadio is 
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For a review of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, see Nabou.com.


Is this book an instance of Christian literature, les belles lettres chrétiennes, a Christian novel ?  Such was the talk around Graham Greene for a long time; is the same rhetoric pertinent to the works of paulo Coelho today ?


-- Litread