“It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”

― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

The Alchemist is one of the most famous books of our generation and for fans of Paulo Coelho, it almost needs no introduction nor a commentary. Paulo estimates over 300 million people and counting have read this book, which puts it into the very top 0.01% of all books of fiction sold by a living author — or any author ever.

There are student study notes galore online and for a time in the 1990s the book featured on many high school English literature curricula. My book, The Secret of The Alchemist — featured in Amazon.com’s 20th Century Literary Criticism category and went straight to #1 for weeks and continues in the top 100 regularly — and this was almost 30 years after the first publication of The Alchemist.