Paulo Coelho was born on 24 August, 1947 in Rio de Janeiro. Before he became an author he worked as a lyricist, journalist, theatre director and actor. Having sold over a 100 million copies of his novels in more than 150 countries, he is the all-time bestselling Portuguese language author.
He was the son of an engineer. As a kid he attended a Jesuit school and he started dreaming of being a writer in his teens. When he was seventeen years old, he was put in a mental school just because he was looked upon as an introvert and he had refused to follow the path of traditions. However, he tried to escape three times from the mental school, till he was finally released at the age of twenty.
After his release from the mental institution he joined a law school on his parents’ insistence. He however dropped out of the law school a year later and started living a hippie life. He traveled through South America, Mexico, North Africa and Europe, fully immersed in the culture of drug which was very popular in the 1960s. After returning to Brazil he started working as a songwriter for people like Elis Regina, Rita Lee and Raul Seixas (a Brazilian icon then).
Paulo Coelho’s first novel, Hell Archives was published in the year 1982. This was not well received but he was determined not to let his dream of writing go away just because of one failure. Undeterred, he started writing on his next novel Practical Manual of Vampirism which was later published in the year 1986. Following this he wrote The Pilgrimage which was in 1987.
Success came to him when his book The Alchemist was published in 1988. At first when this novel was printed by a small publishing house, they printed only 900 copies. However he found a bigger publisher who also published his next book Brida. Following this, the Alchemist became an instant success and went on to become a Brazilian best-seller. It went on to sell more than 60 million copies and later it was translated into more than 67 languages which won him the Guinness World Record for most translated book by a living author. It went on to become one of the best selling novels in history.
Ever since the success of The Alchemist, he has written many other novels like By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept. The Fifth Mountain, Veronika Decides to Die, The Devil and Miss Prym, Eleven Minutes, Like the Flowing River, The Valkyries, and The witch of Portobello.
Submitted by Precious Pheirim.
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