If there were a formula for creating an international bestseller, what would it be? Would the book have to incorporate stories of boys who chase buried treasures, magic stones that help wealth seekers make decisions and old ladies who claim to interpret dreams? It doesn't sound like a winning prescription; after all, the books atop PW's current bestseller list concern bloody medieval sagas, tense courtroom dramas and steamy love affairs.
Unlike those chart busters, Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist is a simple fable—just over 150 pages long—that urges readers to pursue their goals and not give up. "By using a fable, I was trying to convey a message," Coelho explains. "I was also trying to understand myself better. When you use symbolic language, like I do in The Alchemist, you talk to your own soul and other people's souls, too."
Coelho is one of the world's top five bestselling authors, says Newsweek International. But rather than offering readers tantalizing tales of violence, thrills or sex, Coelho writes of regular people who put themselves in extraordinary situations to nurture their inner selves, using unpretentious, unadorned prose. "I try to be direct without being shallow," he says.
The year 2003 marks the 10th anniversary of the English-language publication of The Alchemist. Its first edition, published in Brazil (in Portuguese), sold only 900 copies. Since then, the book has been translated into 56 languages and has hit bestseller lists in 155 countries. According to Coelho's literary agency, the Barcelona-based Sant Jordi Asociados, The Alchemist has sold more than 27 million copies worldwide.
The book concerns a Spanish shepherd named Santiago, who dreams of seeing the Egyptian pyramids. A conversation with a wise old man convinces Santiago to follow his dream. In the end, Santiago winds up learning that to find one's own treasure, one often need not look very far.
In the 10 years since The Alchemist's English-language publication, Coelho has accumulated the trappings of success, but many of them arrived only recently. Somewhat of a literary pop star, Coelho has been inundated with praise from everyday folk from France to Fiji. But the movie deal came just two months ago (when Warner Bros. announced it had set Matrix star Laurence Fishburne to write, direct and star in The Alchemist), and the literary prestige was bestowed upon him last year, when he won a coveted seat in Brazil's Academy of Letters. Coelho calls his achievements "a very abstract success" and believes "an author only realizes he has been understood when he sees someone reading his books."
Coelho's bestseller status is somewhat surprising, considering the author, 55, was once a self-styled visionary who wandered the world in frayed bell bottoms. He has a sundry past, involving three separate stays in a psychiatric hospital (his parents thought it would help lead him away from a career in journalism and toward a more respectable profession); a stint as a rock music lyricist; and a brief stay in a Brazilian prison, where he was detained for writing comic strips the government deemed subversive. By the late '70s, Coelho decided to settle down and took a job at CBS records. Walking the Road to Santiago (a medieval pilgrim's route between France and Spain) prompted the writing of his first book, The Pilgrimage, in 1987. The Alchemist was his second book.
"It was the turning point of my life," Coelho recalls. "I could never imagine such success." Since then, Coelho has written eight more books, including By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, The Valkyries and Veronika Decides to Die. Although none have attained Alchemist-like status (e.g., By the River Piedra sold five million copies and hit bestseller lists in Argentina, Brazil, France and Israel—but not the U.S.), Coelho continues to sell.
But the critics haven't been so quick to laud the author, who still lives in Rio de Janeiro, where he was born. When he campaigned for a seat in Brazil's Academy of Letters last year, the country's intellectuals balked; one Brazilian academic called Coelho's literary style "Mysticism with Coca-Cola." Coelho's response? "I think literary acclaim comes from the reader, not from the establishment. Having said that, of course, I am really pleased [to have been accepted into the academy]. A man must achieve victory in his own village."
Coelho says his background writing music lyrics has helped him write books. "You have to be precise without losing your poetic quality," he says. "You have to synthesize a thought in one sentence. The same goes for journalism—you cut the things that are not important, and get to the core of it."
In recent years, Coelho has returned to his journalistic roots, writing a weekly column in Brazil's Folha de São Paulo that is syndicated worldwide. His latest book, Warrior of the Light: A Manual, which HarperCollins published last month, collects these columns; his publisher calls the book, which is a hybrid of self-help and fiction, an "inspirational companion to The Alchemist." For Coelho, the new book is "about people like you and me, who have our doubts and moments of being down and out. Regardless of what happens in our lives, if we persevere, we will survive and fulfill our destiny."
Coelho seems to be en route to fulfilling his own destiny, although he readily admits the road hasn't always been smooth. After The Alchemist's initial disappointing sales, he was discouraged. "I was gambling all my life on writing this book. But I decided it was time to believe in what I write. It took another few years for me to get published in English. I persevered. I was trying to find my treasure."
