I started reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist.
Shame on me for not paying closer attention to my own subforum. I read that book two years ago and it's one of my all-time favorites. My favorite line is when the Alchemist offers the protagonist some wine and, always wary of a trick, he says, "I thought you Muslims don't drink alcohol?" The alchemist replies, "It isn't what men put into their mouths that's evil. It's what comes out of them that is." (I haven't got the book here so those quotes are not word-for-word.)
My wife specialized in Latin American literature and, specifically, Magical Realism, when she was writing her master's thesis in literature. Unfortunately my head blew up before I got halfway through the book that was the subject of her thesis, Gabriel García Márquez's
One Hundred Years of Solitude. But I do love Coelho and I also recommend
Veronika Decides to Die.
Selling sixty million copies,
The Alchemist is one of the most popular novels ever written. It has been translated into 67 languages, the Guinness record for a living author.
Born in Brazil in 1947, Coelho was so introverted and misunderstood as a child that his parents put him in a mental institution. He eventually succumbed to their wishes and entered law school, but he dropped out and became a hippie, traveling the world and immersing himself in the counterculture. He was a successful songwriter for several years but his lyrics offended Brazil's military rulers in the 1970s and he was arrested and tortured.
Always creative, he worked as an actor, a journalist and a theater director. After walking a 500-mile pilgrimage in Spain, during which he had some of the experiences that informed
The Alchemist, he finally returned to the passion that had so alarmed his parents and became a full-time writer in 1986.
He has published 26 books, selling in aggregate more than 100 million copies in more than 150 countries, and is the all-time best-selling Portuguese-language author.