Daily Times

As the title suggests, this book should be about alchemy, but that’s not the reality. This book is allegorical and based on mythical thoughts and some of their effects on human lives. Alchemist is written by one of the famous Brazilian authors, Paulo Coelho. The first copy was originally written in the Portuguese language in 1988.

Later on, this book became popular after being translated in more than 70 languages.

Coelho was born in Brazil. He wanted to become a writer. His mother responded: “My dear, your father is an engineer. He’s a logical, reasonable man with a very clear vision of the world. Do you 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 religion and faith. Coelho later remarked, “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 his life as a hippie, travelling through South America, North Africa, Mexico and Europe. He 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. This 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. He 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, he walked the 500-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, a turning point in his life.

On the path, Coelho had a spiritual awakening, which he described autobiographically in “The Pilgrimage.”

In an interview, Coelho stated 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 lucrative career as a songwriter and pursue writing full-time.

In 1982, he 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 the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in 1986, Coelho wrote “The Pilgrimage,” which was published in 1987. The following year, he wrote “The Alchemist” and published it through a small Brazilian publishing house, which made an initial print run of 900 copies and decided not to reprint.

He subsequently found a bigger publishing house. With the publication of his next book, “Brida,” The Alchemist also took off. Harper Collins, the biggest publishing house in the US, decided to publish the book in 1994. Then, it became a Brazilian bestseller and later, a worldwide phenomenon.

The Alchemist has gone on to sell more than 83 million copies; becoming one of the best-selling books in history. It has been translated in 81 different languages. It won the Guinness World Record for the 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 as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasure found within him.

Since the publication of The Alchemist, Coelho generally wrote one novel every two years, including By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, The Fifth Mountain, Veronika Decides to Die, The Devil and Miss Prym, Eleven Minutes, Brida, The Valkyries, The Winner Stands Alone, The Zahir, The Witch of Portobello, Aleph, Manuscript Found in Accra, Adultery and The Spy.

In total, Coelho published 30 books. Three of them–The Pilgrimage, The Valkyries and Aleph–are autobiographical, while most of the rest are fictional but 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 and selected teachings.

The boy is the main character of The Alchemist. Born in a small town in Andalusia, he is enthusiastic in his life and desires to travel through the world.

His family wants him to be a priest, but he decides to be a shepherd rather than a priest and asks his father for permission to become a shepherd so that he can travel across the fields of Andalusia. One night, in an abandoned church, he dreams of a child telling him that if he goes to the Egyptian Pyramids, he will find a treasure. Later, he meets a gipsy woman and a mysterious man in the town of Tarifa, who send him on a journey to the other side of Africa.

This girl belongs to the Andalusian region and is the daughter of a merchant who shears sheep and pays the shepherds for that. As Santiago meets this girl, talks to her and likes her instantly after getting his flock sheared, he leaves for his journey. Yet, he wishes to come back to meet this girl.

She doesn’t know about the Pyramids of Egypt. She states, “I have never heard of them, but if it was a child who showed them to you they exist.” At first sight, she looked crazy, suspicious and dangerous to the boy. She was promised one-tenth of the boy’s treasure if he ever found it.

The boy’s open mind makes him particularly suited to finding his Personal Legend. He also values his freedom very highly, which is why he becomes a shepherd and resists involvement in things that threaten his freedom.

Melchizedek is the king of Salem–a mysterious, far-off land. He appears to Santiago in the town square of Tarifa, where he tells Santiago about the Soul of the World and his Personal Legend for the first time. He always appears to people who are trying to live their Personal Legend, even if they don’t know it. While he appears at first to be dressed in the common Arab dress, at one point, he pulled aside his cloak to reveal a gold breastplate encrusted with precious stones. He also gives Santiago the magical stones Urim and Thummim.

He gives the boy a job in Tangiers after he has been robbed. The boy takes the job at the crystal shop and learns much about the shopkeeper’s attitude towards life and the importance of dreaming. The shopkeeper, while generally afraid to take risks, is a very kind man. This is the case when the shopkeeper tells the boy that he will not return to Spain since it is not his fate.

The boy meets an Englishman on the caravan to al-Fayoum. The Englishman is trying to become a great alchemist and is travelling to al-Fayoum to meet with a famous alchemist known to be over 200 years old and for having the ability to turn any metal into gold. The boy learns much about alchemy from the Englishman, who lends his books while they travel across the Sahara.

A beautiful desert girl lives at the al-Fayoum oasis. The boy falls in love with her at the well, and they talk every day for several weeks. He asks Fatima to marry him, but she insists that he seek out his Personal Legend before they marry. This perplexes him, but the Alchemist teaches him that true love never gets in the way of fulfilling one’s dreams. If it does, then it is not true love.

A very powerful alchemist lives at the al-Fayoum oasis in Egypt. The boy hears about him through the Englishman, who wishes to study with the Alchemist, but the boy is revealed to be the Alchemist’s true disciple. The Alchemist dresses in all black and uses a falcon to hunt for game. The Alchemist is also in possession of the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher’s Stone.

The boy and the alchemist stop at a Coptic monastery, and the monk invites them in. The Alchemist produces gold from a pan of lead the monk provides, and separates the disk into four parts, giving two to the monk, with instructions to give the boy one piece if he ever needs it, one to himself, and one to the boy. The monk tries to refuse the offering, but the alchemist tells him that “life may be listening, and give [you] less the next time.”

Afterwards, when the boy crawls back beaten and elated from the Pyramids, the monk gives him the other part of the gold disk and helps him recover.

Andalusian shepherd boy, Santiago, is headed to a town where he met a beautiful girl the year before and is pretty ramped up about it. While camping out in an abandoned church with his sheep, Santiago has a recurring dream, in which little boy appears and shows him the path to get his treasure buried in pyramids in Egypt. He explains it to a Gypsy woman, who tells him that he must go to the pyramids in Egypt to find a hidden treasure and she was promised to be given one-tenth of his treasure if he ever has that.

Then, Santiago runs into a mysterious old man named Melchizedek, who tells him that everyone has a Personal Legend they must follow and that he must listen to omens to seek his treasure. He also gives him two philosopher’s stones, Urim and Thummim, which will help him know what to do when he can’t seem to find answers-sort of like a Magic 8 ball, only less ambiguous.

Santiago sells his sheep and heads to Tangier, where he’s promptly robbed of all his money from a stranger guy who tricks him being a friend and then robbed him. Then, he gets a job selling glass, coming up with flashy marketing ideas that bring in all sorts of business. Once he’s saved up enough money to cross the Sahara and get to the pyramids, he meets up with a caravan about to cross the desert on camels. Bonus: an Englishman in the group is headed to the Al-Fayoum oasis to meet an alchemist who will teach him how to turn any metal into gold.

So far everything has been going smoothly, which means that something bad has to happen. And it does. There are nerve-wracking rumours of war between desert tribes, and the caravan decides to chill in a handy oasis until the wars are over-meaning anywhere from weeks to years. Poor Santiago: so close to the pyramids and so very far.

He decides to help the Englishman find the alchemist. Luckily, the only person who will give him any info just so happens to be a smoking hot girl named Fatima, with whom Santiago promptly falls in love. When the Englishman goes to the alchemist, he makes him start cooking up some lead as a first step towards becoming an alchemist himself, so he’s pretty busy with that for the rest of the novel.

Santiago goes out into the desert where he has a vision of the oasis being attacked. He tells the tribal leaders, who decide to get ready to defend. One catch: if the oasis isn’t attacked, they’ll kill Santiago.

Surprise! The oasis is attacked, and the prepared men can defeat the raiders. That worked out well. The alchemist takes note of the new smarty pants in town and decides to help him reach the pyramids, but they’re captured by yet another group of warriors as soon as they ride out on horseback across the desert. The alchemist has a solution: he tells them that Santiago will become the wind.

Santiago figures he might as well try, what with being captured, so he sits down, concentrates on the desert, and finally, he becomes the wind. Naturally, this scares the daylights out of the warriors, so they let him and the alchemist go on their way.

They finally arrive at a monastery, where the alchemist whips up some gold and divides it up before sending Santiago on to the pyramids. He digs where he’s sure he’ll find the treasure, but (of course) some punks come and beat him up and steal his gold. Give a guy a break, punks! Weirdly, one of them mentions that he once had a dream on that spot of a treasure buried in an abandoned church in Spain. Bingo! Santiago has his answer.

The book ends with Santiago digging up the treasure in the church where the whole story started and getting ready to head back to Egypt, where Fatima awaits.

1. Fear is a bigger obstacle than the obstacle itself

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

Any new pursuit requires entering uncharted territory – that’s scary. But with great risk comes great reward. The experiences you gain in pursuing your dream will make it all worthwhile.

2. What is “true” will always endure

“If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return.”

Truth cannot be veiled by smoke and mirrors – it will always stand firm. When you’re searching for the “right” decision, it will be the one that withstands the test of time and the weight of scrutiny.

3. Break the monotony

“When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognise the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.”

Gratitude is the practice of finding the good in each day. Life can easily become stagnant, mundane, and monotonous, but that changes depending on what we choose to see. There’s always a silver lining if you look for it.

4. Embrace the present

Living in the present is the way to improve past and the coming future.

5. Your success has a ripple effect

“That’s what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

Growth, change and evolution are weaved into the fabric of reality. Becoming a better version of yourself creates a ripple effect that benefits everything around you: your lifestyle, your family, your friends and your community.

6. Make a decision

“When someone makes a decision, he is diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he has never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the unknowns and finer details of your dreams. Actions will flow out of having confidence in your decision; sitting on the fence will get you nowhere.

7. Be unrealistic

“I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.”

Some of the greatest inventions would not have happened if people chose to accept the world as it is. Great achievements and innovations begin with a mindset that ignores the impossible.

8. Keep getting back up

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

Because the eighth time could be your breakthrough. Some of the greatest novels in history were published after receiving hundreds of rejections. Thankfully, those authors never gave up.

9. Focus on your journey

“If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

It’s easy to be influenced by others, but you’ll be miserable if you end up living someone else’s life. There’s nothing wrong with taking advice and learning from others, but make sure it aligns with your desires and passions.

10. Always take action

“There is only one way to learn. It’s through action.”

You can study, read, and listen until you turn blue in the face, but the full experience is when you take action and let the rubber meet the road. Once you’re done aiming, pull the trigger.

The writer is an Assistant Professor in English at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro