26/12/2023
“When The Alchemist was first published twenty-five years ago in my native Brazil, no one noticed.
A bookseller in the northeast corner of the country told me that only one person purchased a copy the first week of its release.
It took another six months for the bookseller to unload a second copy—and that was to the same person who bought the first! And who
knows how long it took to sell the third.
By the end of the year, it was clear to everyone that The Alchemist wasn’t working.
My original publisher decided to cut me loose and cancelled our contract. They wiped their hands off the project and let me take the book with me. I was forty-one and desperate.
But I never lost faith in the book or ever wavered in my vision. Why? Because it was me in there, all of me, heart and soul. I was living my own metaphor. A man sets out on a journey, dreaming of a beautiful or magical place, in pursuit of some unknown treasure. At the end of his journey, the man realizes the treasure was with him the entire
time.”
-PAULO COELHO
The book became an organic phenomenon and the rest is history. It is considered one of the ten best books of the twentieth century. When interviewers ask Coelho whether or not he knew that it would be a success, this is what he had
to say: “The answer is no. I had no idea. How could I? When I sat down to write The Alchemist, all I knew was that I wanted to
write about my soul. I wanted to write about my quest to find my treasure.”
Book: https://amzn.to/48vjPWz