Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947. Before fiction took over his life he wrote song lyrics for Brazilian performers, among them Elis Regina and Rita Lee. In 1986 he walked the pilgrim road to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. That journey became his first book, The Pilgrimage, published in 1987.

His novels read like parables. The chapters are short, the sentences plain, and the hero usually leaves home because of a dream or an inner pull. Spiritual searching, omens and the nerve to follow a personal calling come back from book to book.

The Alchemist followed in 1988. It tells of Santiago, a Spanish shepherd boy who sets out for Egypt after a recurring dream. The English translation by Alan R. Clarke came out from Harper San Francisco in 1993, under the subtitle A Fable About Following Your Dream. Pan Macmillan reports that the book earned Coelho a Guinness World Record in 2009 as the most translated author. He has been a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002 and was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace in 2007.

Start with The Alchemist. It is short, it is the book that made his name, and it contains most of his habits in miniature. If you want to see where that outlook came from, read The Pilgrimage next, his account of the Santiago walk. After that, try a later novel such as Veronika Decides to Die or Eleven Minutes.