Madonna says his book changed her life. Will Smith and Julia Roberts agree. Oprah Winfrey keeps a copy by her bed and says, ‘Oh, I love The Alchemist!’ But Paulo Coelho brushes it all away with a sweep of his hand. ‘This is very moving, to see all these people trying to help me, but for the sake of sales, it does nothing.’
So how exactly exactly has Coelho sold a staggering 65 million copies of The Alchemist, a deceptively simple story of a shepherd boy who crosses the desert in search of treasure, only to find it back where he started?
The book is far more famous than its author, so who is this small, rotonund, bald Brazilian with the white goatee and the chain-smoking habit? Is the 71-year-old a guru, as so many of his followers believe?
Paulo Coelho de Souza had a troubled childhood in Rio with strict Catholic parents who didn’t understand his desire to be a writer. He started law school but dropped out to do what the character of ‘Paulo’ does in his new novel Hippie: travel Europe, meet a girl in Amsterdam and get on a Magic Bus all the way to Kathmandu
Event has come to his apartment on the shores of Lake Geneva to find out. Was he pleased to hear of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge listening to a passage from his book at the wedding of Kate’s sister Pippa Middleton last year? Coelho looks blank. Nobody has told him about that. He’s never heard of Pippa, has he? ‘No.’ She’s the sister of our future Queen, I say. ‘Right. I did not know that.’
Is it hard to keep track of all these famous fans when you have sold books in 170 countries and been translated into 81 languages? He met a reader here in Geneva just the other day. ‘I was in a park and I saw a lady reading my book. I said: ‘I am the author.’ She said: ‘No you are not!’ She did not believe that an author as famous as I am could walk around like a normal person. They always fantasise that I live in a castle surrounded by bodyguards.’
Madonna says Coelho’s book The Alchemist changed her life
His penthouse apartment is surprisingly modest, but then an impossibly good-looking young man in a white servant’s uniform brings him an exquisite silver box in which to tip his ash.
She was reading The Alchemist, of course. The book was a flop when it first came out in Brazil 30 years ago, but then it was translated into English and became a huge success. The story features an Andalusian shepherd boy called Santiago who goes to Egypt after a dream about of treasure under the Pyramids. He falls in love during a long, dangerous journey across the desert and meets a mysterious alchemist, who shows him that lead can be turned to gold but that there are deeper, more precious secrets in life too: ‘Wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.’
The story is shot through with magical symbolism and the message that you can have – or be – anything you want, as long as you want it enough, follow the signs and portents around you and dare to act on your dream: or as Coelho calls it, your personal legend. As Oprah says,: ‘It absolutely shows you that if you have the desire the universe will rise up to meet you exactly where you are.’
That’s easier to say when the universe has blessed you with fame and fortune, perhaps, but Coelho insists his own life proves that it is true. ‘I’m not the alchemist, I’m the shepherd boy.’
Paulo Coelho de Souza had a troubled childhood in Rio with strict Catholic parents who didn’t understand his desire to be a writer. He started law school but dropped out to do what the character of ‘Paulo’ does in his new novel Hippie: travel Europe, meet a girl in Amsterdam and get on a Magic Bus all the way to Kathmandu. ‘I wanted to write it because of the sake of the world, which has become totally polarised. Good and evil. This drives me crazy, because as hippies we were people who used to value important things like food, travelling, contacting eye to eye. People were very helpful to each other. There’s this giant leap backwards, you know? Borders everywhere. When we arrived with hair down our shoulders it was so friendly. ‘Welcome to the UK.’ I don’t think it is like this any more. No, I don’t think it is.’
As ever, the book is a combination of fiction and inspirational self-help. ‘Hippie is a philosophy: simplify your life, trust yourself as a human being, be open to connection.’
Coelho with his wife Christina. Coelho has been open about the affairs on both sides and even wrote a book called Adultery, but says the openness saved them. ‘Marriage is something that fulfils your life. Jealousy destroys your marriage, destroys your life’
Free love was a feature of those days. Does he still believe in that? ‘I don’t believe in jealousy. Jealousy in marriage can make a life a hell. I’ve been married for 40 years.’
His wife Christina, an artist, is within earshot. Coelho has been open about the affairs on both sides and even wrote a book called Adultery, but says the openness saved them. ‘Marriage is something that fulfils your life. Jealousy destroys your marriage, destroys your life.’
Coelho became a songwriter in the early Seventies, with remarkable success. ‘It was like you go to a casino, you buy some chips, all of a sudden you win a lot of money.’
But the Brazilian government saw him as a subversive, locked him up and tortured him with electric shocks. After his release he worked as an actor and director while recovering and did not begin to write until taking the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain in 1986. That was when he realised he should pursue his dream, writing a book called The Pilgrimage and then The Alchemist.
I assume the game-changer came when the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, was photographed reading a copy back in 1999, just months after he had escaped impeachment for alleged perjury over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but Coelho flatly denies it.
‘I remembered that Ian Fleming had become famous because John F Kennedy liked to read James Bond and I thought: ‘The same thing is going to happen to me.’ But it had no effect. Zero.’
Coelho would rather believe in a different kind of magic. ‘Word of mouth is the Holy Grail for the writer.’
There’s another secret to his success, too: having come from an unfashionable country, as the literary establishment saw Brazil, he was prepared to put in the air miles travelling to others like it all over the world, including Macedonia, Iceland and Iran, where he was mobbed by 5,000 fans and had to cancel a signing. These days, Coelho has retired from touring. ‘I used to love to travel, now I hate to travel.’
Coelho with Oprah Winfrey. Oprah says of The Alchemist: ‘It absolutely shows you that if you have the desire the universe will rise up to meet you exactly where you are’
People want answers. They think he has them, which is why he is one of the most popular authors alive, having sold a total of 225 million books worldwide. Has this hero of the self-help movement achieved any kind of contentment? ‘No! This is part of the human condition, no? There are moments that I have my doubts. There are moments that I’m sad. There are moments that I tell myself, ‘Oh my God, I did nothing in this life.’ Which is not true, I know. If I were not like this, if I were a classic guru, I’d be lost.’
His books say the answers lie within ourselves, but here in real life, Paulo Coelho says: ‘Even within ourselves, we are a mystery to ourselves.’ Madonna would be horrified, I say. But the writer, who refuses to be anybody’s guru, just laughs.
‘Hippie’ by Paulo Coelho is published by Hutchinson, £14.99. Offer price £11.99 (20 per cent discount) until November 18. Order at mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640, p&p is free on orders over £15. Spend £30 on books and get FREE premium delivery.