Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist HarperCollins（保罗科埃略的炼金术士柯林斯）.pdf

.au Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation —from The Alchemist Harper Perennial 0062502182 Note to Teachers Before the publication of The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (b. 1947) worked as a theater director, playwright, and songwriter for some of Brazil’s most popular singers. In 1986, he walked the Road of Santiago, an ancient Spanish pilgrimage, and this experience inspired The Pilgrimage, his first novel, and The Alchemist, whose protagonist takes his name from the road. When The Alchemist was published in 1988, it was an instant international bestseller, and reached the #1 slot on bestseller lists in 29 countries. Paulo Coelho became one of the most widely read contemporary authors. The Alchemist tells the story of Santiago, the young Andalusian shepherd who dreams of buried treasure in Egypt and embarks upon a challenging and enlightening journey to find it. With all the simplicity and symbolic richness of a fable, Paulo Coelho’s novel is both a hunt for buried treasure and a spiritual quest, with a hero who overcomes trials along the way with the help of disguised teachers who guide him. The story begins with Santiago, referred to throughout the novel simply as the boy, deciding to sleep in an abandoned church with an enormous sycamore growing from the spot where the sacristy once stood. It is here that the boy, who had recently chosen not to become a priest, dreams of his treasure, and it is here that he will finally find it, buried among the roots of the tree, after he returns from his pilgrimage to the pyramids. These kinds of traditional religious symbols appear throughout The Alchemist, but in Coelho’s st