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Browse Reviews by Title and Author Animal Farm - George Orwell Back When We Were
Grownups - Anne Tyler By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept - P. Coelho  Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood Cry, the
Beloved Country - Alan Paton Dark Passions - A.J. Ciulla Dove in a Window - Jean
Marie Haugen Dreamcatcher - Stephen King East of Mourning - Michael Markus Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J. K. Rowling Jumping Lightyears - Dr. H Major
Barbara - Bernard Shaw Mansfield Park - Jane Austen Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur
Golden Mourning Glory - Warren Adler Otherland IV: Sea of Silver Light - Tad
Williams On the Road - Jack Kerouac Perfume - Patrick Suskind Restoration - Rose
Tremain Sherlock Holmes: Dead Rabbits Society - Philip J. Carraher The Alchemist
- Paulo Coelho The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Salman Rushdie The Immoralist -
Andre Gide The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy The Once and Future King -
T. H. White The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

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THE ALCHEMIST
PAULO COELHO

Dreams, symbols, signs, and adventure follow the reader like echoes of ancient
wise voices in "The Alchemist", a novel that combines an atmosphere of Medieval
mysticism with the song of the desert. With this symbolic masterpiece Coelho
states that we should not avoid our destinies, and urges people to follow their
dreams, because to find our "Personal Myth" and our mission on Earth is the way
to find "God", meaning happiness, fulfillment, and the ultimate purpose of
creation.

   The novel tells the tale of Santiago, a boy who has a dream and the courage
to follow it. After listening to "the signs" the boy ventures in his personal,
Ulysses-like journey of exploration and self-discovery, symbolically searching
for a hidden treasure located near the pyramids in Egypt.

   When he decides to go, his father's only advice is "Travel the world until
you see that our castle is the greatest, and our women the most beautiful". In
his journey, Santiago sees the greatness of the world, and meets all kinds of
exciting people like kings and alchemists. However, by the end of the novel, he
discovers that "treasure lies where your heart belongs", and that the treasure
was the journey itself, the discoveries he made, and the wisdom he acquired.

   "The Alchemist", is an exciting novel that bursts with optimism; it is the
kind of novel that tells you that everything is possible as long as you really
want it to happen. That may sound like an oversimplified version of new-age
philosophy and mysticism, but as Coelho states "simple things are the most
valuable and only wise people appreciate them".

   As the alchemist himself says, when he appears to Santiago in the form of an
old king "when you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires
so that your wish comes true". This is the core of the novel's philosophy and a
motif that echoes behind Coelho's writing all through "The Alchemist". And isn't
it true that the whole of humankind desperately wants to believe the old king
when he says that the greatest lie in the world is that at some point we lose
the ability to control our lives, and become the pawns of fate. Perhaps this is
the secret of Coelho's success: that he tells people what they want to hear, or
rather that he tells them that what they wish for but never thought possible
could even be probable.