Spy (Coelho) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—August 24, 1947
• Where—Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Education—Left law school in second year
• Awards—Crystal Award (Switzerland); Rio Branco Order (Brazil); Legion d’Honneur (France);
   Brazilian Academy of Letters (Brazil)
• Currently—lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil


Paulo Coelho de Souza is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist. He is the recipient of numerous international awards, amongst them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. He is best know for his novel The Alchemist (1987, 1994), which has been translated into 80 languages.

Early life
Coelho was born in Brazil and attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded,

My dear, your father is an engineer. He's a logical, reasonable man with a very clear vision of the world. Do you actually know what it means to be a writer?

At 17, Coelho's introversion and opposition to following a traditional path led to his parents committing him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20

Born into a Catholic family, his parents were strict about the religion and faith. Coelho later remarked that

It wasn't that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn't know what to do... They did not do that to destroy me, they did that to save me.

At his parents' wishes, Coelho enrolled in law school and abandoned his dream of becoming a writer. One year later, he dropped out and lived life as a hippie, traveling through South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe and started using drugs in the 1960s Upon his return to Brazil, Coelho worked as a songwriter, composing lyrics for Elis Regina, Rita Lee, and Brazilian icon Raul Seixas. Composing with Raul led to Coelho being associated with magic and occultism, due to the content of some songs.

In 1974, Coelho was arrested for "subversive" activities by the ruling military government, who had taken power ten years earlier and viewed his lyrics as left-wing and dangerous. Coelho also worked as an actor, journalist, and theatre director before pursuing his writing career.

In 1986, Coelho walked the 500-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, a turning point in his life. On the path, he had a spiritual awakening, which he described autobiographically in The Pilgrimage In an interview, he aserted,

[In 1986], I was very happy in the things I was doing. I was doing something that gave me food and water— to use the metaphor in The Alchemist, I was working, I had a person whom I loved, I had money, but I was not fulfilling my dream. My dream was, and still is, to be a writer.

Coelho would leave his (by then) lucrative career as a songwriter and pursue writing full-time.

Writing career
In 1982, Coelho published his first book, Hell Archives, which failed to make a substantial impact. In 1986 he contributed to the Practical Manual of Vampirism, although he later tried to take it off the shelves since he considered it "of bad quality."

After making his 1986 pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Coelho wrote The Pilgrimage (1987), and the following year, he wrote The Alchemist, publishing d it through a small Brazilian house with an initial print run of 900 copies. It was decided not to issue another reprint.

Later, however, he found a larger publishing house, and with the publication of his next book Brida, The Alchemist took off. HarperCollins, then the biggest publishing House in the U.S., decided to publish the book in 1994. It became, first, a Brazilian bestseller and, later, a world-wide phenomenon. The Alchemist has gone on to sell more than 83 million copies, becoming one of the best-selling books in history, and has been translated into 67 different languages, winning the Guinness World Record for most translated book by a living author.

The Alchemist, easily known as his most successful book, is a story about a young shepherd who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. No one knows what the treasure is or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along the way. But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure found within.

Later writing
Since the publication of The Alchemist, Coelho has generally written one novel every two years, in total, some 30 books. Three of them—The Pilgrimage,The Valkyries and Aleph—are autobiographical, while the majority of the rest are fictional, although rooted in his life experiences. Others, like Maktub, The Manual of the Warrior of Light, and Like the Flowing River, are collections of essays, newspaper columns, or selected teachings. In total, Coelho has sold more than 210 million books in over 170 countries worldwide (June 2015 sales figures), and his works have been translated into 80 languages

Coelho writes up to three blog posts a week at his blog,[16] and has over 28.5 million fans on Facebook, and more than 11.1 million followers on Twitter, a higher number than authors such as Stephen King and J.K. Rowling.[17] Coelho discussed his relationship with readers through social media platforms with The Wall Street Journal in August 2014.[17]
Não Pare na Pista

In November 2014, Paulo Coelho finished uploading around 80,000 documents-manuscripts, diaries, photos, reader letters, press clippings-and created a virtual Paulo Coelho Foundation,[19] together with the physical foundation which is based in Geneva.

Personal life
Coelho has been married to his wife, the artist Christina Oiticica, since 1980. Together they had previously spent half the year in Rio de Janeiro and the other half in a country house in the Pyrenees Mountains of France. Coelho and Oiticica now permanently reside in Geneva, Switzerland.

In 1996, Coelho founded the Paulo Coelho Institute, which provides support to children and the elderly. He continues to write, following his own version of The Alchemist's "Language of the World."

Though he was raised in a Catholic family, he left his faith in his 20's. However, he later returned to his faith and is a devout Catholic now, attending Holy Mass regularly and participating in several charity programs organized by the Church. Though he accepts the supremacy of the supreme pontiff, the Pope, he is suspicious and often criticises various views of the Church, such as the its views on gay marriage. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/5/2016).