Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian novelist, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947. Institutionalised as a teenager and imprisoned under the military dictatorship in 1974, he worked as a journalist and wrote song lyrics with the musician Raul Seixas before turning to books. Walking the pilgrim road to Santiago de Compostela gave him his first, “The Pilgrimage” (1987), followed by “The Alchemist” (1988), the parable that became one of the most translated books in the world. Later titles include “By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept” (1994), “Veronika Decides to Die” (1998), “The Zahir” (2005) and “Aleph” (2011). His work appears in more than eighty languages, and he has been a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002.