Born on 24th August 1945 in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, to a father who was an engineer , Paulo Coelo lived life as a hippie, traveling through South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe and started using drugs in the 1960s, Back home, In 1982, Coelho published his first book, Hell Archives, which failed to make a substantial impact. In 1986 he contributed to the Practical Manual of Vampirism, although he later tried to take it off the shelves since he considered it "of bad quality." After making the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in 1986, Coelho wrote The Pilgrimage, published in 1987. The following year, Coelho wrote The Alchemist and published it through a small Brazilian publishing house that made an initial print run of 900 copies and decided not to reprint it. He subsequently found a bigger publishing house, and with the publication of his next book Brida, The Alchemist took off. HarperCollins decided to publish the book in 1994. Later it became an international bestseller.
While trying to overcome his procrastination about launching his writing career, Coelho said, "If I see a white feather today, that is a sign that God is giving me that I have to write a new book." Coelho found a white feather in the window of a shop, and began writing that day.[13] Since the publication of The Alchemist, Coelho has generally written at least one novel every two years. Four of them – The Pilgrimage, Hippie, The Valkyries and Aleph – are autobiographical, while the majority of the rest are broadly fictional. He is unquestionably part of the most successful authors of his time having sold more than 200 million copies of his books in at least 150 countries worldwide. List of his books are:
Publication Order of And On The Seventh Day Books
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept -1996
Veronika Decides to Die -1999
The Devil and Miss Prym -2000
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
The Alchemist -1993
The Pilgrimage -1995
The Valkyries -1995
The Fifth Mountain -1995
Eleven Minutes -2003
The Zahir -2005
The Witch of Portobello -2007
Brida -2008
The Winner Stands Alone -2009
Manuscript Found in Accra -2013
Adultery -2014
The Spy -2016
Discover Your Destiny -2017
Hippie -2018
Publication Order of Short Stories
The Way of the Bow -2012
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
Like the Flowing River -2005
Stories for Parents, Children and Grandchildren: Volume 1 -2008
Christmas Stories -2014
Publication Order of Anthologies
Inspirations: Selections from Classic Literature -2010
Publication Order of Graphic Novels
The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel -2010
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
The Diary of a Magus -1992
Warrior of the Light -2003
Journeys -2004
Life: Selected Quotations -2007
Aleph -2011
The Book of Manuals -2013
The Supreme Gift -2014
Love: Selected Quotations -2015
Warrior of the Light, Volume 3 -2016
Had already written reviews on
Brida, Adultary, Alchemist, By River Piedra I sat down and wept (1994), Veronika decides to die (1998), The Devil and Miss Prym (2000) and Alep . Some other books, on which the review’s were missed are:
The Fifth Mountain
Fleeing his home from persecution, 23-year-old Elijah takes refuge with a young widow and her son in the beautiful town of Akbar. Already struggling to maintain his sanity in a chaotic world of tyranny and war, he is now forced to choose between his new-found love and his overwhelming sense of duty. Evoking all the drama and intrigue of the colorful, chaotic world of the Middle East, Paulo Coelho turns the trials of Elijah into an intensely moving and inspiring story – one that powerfully brings out the universal themes of how faith and love can ultimately triumph over suffering.
The Pilgrimage
On a legendary road across Spain, travelled by pilgrims of San Tiago, we find Paulo Coelho on a contemporary quest for ancient wisdom. This journey becomes a truly initiatory experience and Paulo is transformed forever as he learns to understand the nature of truth through the simplicity of life.
Eleven Minutes
In Maria, the author has created a strong, sensual young woman who grabs our sympathy from the first, as she suffers unrequited love as a child, learns a bit about sex as a teenager and, at 19, makes the ill-advised decision to leave Rio on a Swedish stranger's promise of fame and fortune. Maria's trials and triumphs—she goes from restaurant dancer to high-class prostitute—would make for an entertaining if rather prosaic novel, but Coelho, unfortunately, does not leave it there. Instead, he embarks on a philosophical exploration of sexual love, using Maria's increasingly ponderous and pseudo-philosophical diary entries as a means for expounding on the nature of sexual desire, passion and love. At the end, the story boils down to a rather predictable romance tarted up with a few sexy trappings.
Men can beat you up. Shout at you, threaten you and yet they’re scared to death of women really. Perhaps not the women they married. But there’s always one woman who frightens them and forces them to submit to her caprices. Even if it’s their own mother.
Human Beings can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings.
No one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.
Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path. Keeping passion at bay or surrendering blindly to it – which of these two attitudes is the least destructive? I don’t know.
Everything is important. If you live your life intensely, you experience pleasure all the time and don’t feel the need for anything else.
The Winner Stands Alone
Had written a lot on Diamond’s but not the Book Summary. Spanning 24 hours during the Cannes Film Festival, this scintillating parable about shallowness, greed and celebrity worship unsparingly examines the Superclass, the elite's elite, whose members' dependence on luxury corrupts. Wealthy Russian businessman Igor Malev, who's obsessed with his ex-wife, Ewa, now married to a fashion designer turned producer, morphs into a serial killer to get Ewa's attention. No one is immune as Igor targets a comely street vendor, an influential movie distributor and a big-name actor. The power plays among the various directors, movie stars, starlets and producers make Igor's antics appear almost banal in comparison. Coelho's trademark mysticism and spiritual messages provide an extra boost to the thriller plot.
Like Amitabh Bachchan of Bollywood, and Rajinikanth from Tollywood, here is an author who proves age is not a barrier and continues to shine brighter as years go by. Waiting to read many more of his.
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