Paulo Coelho

Before The Alchemist carried his name around the world, Paulo Coelho de Souza had already lived several different lives in public and private. Born on 24 August 1947 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he attended a Jesuit school, then found himself pulled between family expectations and his own wish to write. At 17, his parents committed him to a mental institution. He escaped three times before being released at 20. On their wishes he enrolled in law school, but after a year he left, choosing instead to live as a hippie and travel through South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe.

Back in Brazil, Coelho first made his mark not as a novelist but as a songwriter. He composed lyrics for Elis Regina, Rita Lee, and Raul Seixas, and also worked as an actor, journalist, and theatre director. In 1974, he was arrested for “subversive” activities and tortured while in custody. Those early decades gave his later writing much of its tension: the pull between obedience and freedom, ordinary work and spiritual hunger, risk and self-discovery.

His first book, Hell Archives, appeared in 1982 and was not very successful. In 1986, he contributed to the Practical Manual of Vampirism, a book he later tried to remove from shelves because he considered it poor in quality. That same year, he walked the Camino de Santiago in northwestern Spain, an experience he later described as a personal spiritual turning point. From it came The Pilgrimage, published in 1987. A year later he wrote The Alchemist, first issued by a small Brazilian publisher in an initial run of 900 copies. The publisher chose not to reprint it, but Coelho found a larger house, and after the publication of Brida, The Alchemist began to find its audience.

The book’s reach eventually became enormous. HarperCollins published The Alchemist in 1994, and it grew into an international bestseller. Coelho later said that the Sufi tradition influenced him, especially in writing The Alchemist and later The Zahir. His work has been published in more than 170 countries, translated into eighty-three languages, and has sold 320 million copies. Since 2002, he has been a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. His books include autobiographical novels such as The Pilgrimage, Hippie, The Valkyries, and Aleph, as well as collections including Maktub, The Manual of the Warrior of Light, and Like the Flowing River.

Coelho’s work has also drawn criticism. Although he describes himself as Catholic, some have criticized his stance as incompatible with the Catholic faith, citing New Age, pantheist, and relativist elements. Reviews of later books have sometimes called them superficial. Still, his audience has remained vast, helped by a style that turns spiritual searching into clear, memorable lines. One of the sayings featured with his work captures the urgency that runs through much of his writing: “One day you will wake up, and there won't be any more time to do the things you've always wanted. Do it now.” It is a simple sentence, but simplicity has always been part of Coelho’s appeal.