The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

        One of the most popular novels to emerge in the past twenty years, Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, a story about the necessary pursuit of happiness, has endeared its author to thousands of readers worldwide. The Alchemist was originally published in Portuguese in 1988. However, the novel’s translation into English and republication in 1993 made the work an “overnight” financial success. It remains on several best-seller lists every year.
        The Alchemist traces the path of Santiago, a young Spanish shepherd who is compelled to follow his dream of finding hidden treasure in Egypt. To do so, he must leave the comfort zone of home, learn to trust the “Soul of the World,” and believe that there are forces in the universe that want us to be happy. In order to find happiness, however, Santiago must first discover his “Personal Legend”—that is to say, he must to discover what he is meant to do in the world. Fortunately, Santiago soon takes the first step in his acquisition of happiness: he listens to his heart and overcomes fear. As Santiago continues his sometimes-painful journey, he discovers that one cannot be dissuaded from pursuing a “Personal Legend,” even if the choices seem impossible to bear. The end result for anyone who does so, Coelho assures his readers, is physical and spiritual reward.

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Eleven Minutes - Paulo Coelho

        A new, international bestseller by the author of The Alchemist tells the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love. A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune. Instead, she ends up working as a prostitute.
        In Geneva, Maria drifts further and further away from love as she develops a fascination with sex. Eventually, Maria's despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness, sexual pleasure for its own sake, or risking everything to find her own "inner light" and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love.

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The Witch of Portobello - Paulo Coelho

        The Witch of Portobello narrated an exceptional and forceful tale. Coelho has adopted a unique narrative technique. He has written it as a series of accounts of individuals, and their first-person interactions with the unusual protagonist Athena, the witch of Portobello. The story winds around Athena’s dilemma, and her tearing quest to fill up the spaces within her, the negative, the silences in her life, to answer her questions of self, of will and of truth. Her search takes her through a journey of many phases until she realizes that silence is what defines the sound. This discovery is enough for her to open new doors of perception, and she finds within herself, a powerful energy. She is recognized by some as a saint and some as sinner. In fact, through the accounts, it is clear that everyone has encountered a completely different person, as if a creation of their own selves.
        The book is a testament to her unshakeable trust in humanity, withstanding all the atrocities which finally killed her. Parts range from light-reading to heavily emotional, depending entirely on the person presenting the account, be it her parents, colleagues, instructors, friends, acquaintances or her husband. However, this ensures that her character comes out complete, different as she was to different people.

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Maktub - Paulo Coelho

        Maktub is a collection of stories, parabolas that don’t pretend to constitute an apprenticeship but offer a coloured treasure of fragmented wisdom from different cultures. Those short stories, inspired to the writer by vary different sources and folklores, were born from Paulo Coelho’s collaboration with the daily Folha de São Paulo. Coelho selected texts published between June 1993 and June 1994, to offer readers around the world this Maktub, which deepens through the prism of a universal mosaic of oral tradition. According to Paulo Coelho himself, “Maktub is not an advice book, but an exchange of experiences”, an excellent occasion to reflect and meet oneself again.


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The Zahir - Paulo Coelho

          "The Zahir means 'the present' or 'unable to go unnoticed' in Arabic. The story revolves around the narrator-a bestselling novelist's search for his missing wife,Esther. He enjoys all the privileges that money and celebrityhood bring. He is suspected of foul play by the authorities and the press of having a role to play in the inexplicable disappearance of his wife from their Paris home.
          Thereby, the protagonist is forced to re-examine his own life and marriage as well.The narrator is unable to figure out what led to Esther's disappearance. Was she abducted or had she abandoned their marriage? He comes across Mikhail,one of Esther's friends.The narrator with his help, realizes that to find Esther, he must find his own self. Mikhail introduces him to a tribe who have unconventional ways of living. Through the narrator's journey from Paris to Kazakhstan, Coelho explores various meanings of love and life."

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