The Witch of Portobello - Paulo Coelho

The Brazilian author Paulo Coelho (born in 1947) has been after me for a while, I can't enter a German bookshop without seeing piles of his books, all in the bestseller section, when browsing on the British or German Amazon, it doesn't take long until I come across one of his books, and dooyoo has listed 16 of his books for which 40 reviews have been written up to now. At last I've surrendered, I didn't buy his first and most successful novel, The Alchemist, though, but The Witch of Portobello because I've been to Portobello Road and I like books set in London. Sherine Khalil, aka Athena, aka The Witch, was born in Transsylvania to a single Gypsy mother ...  Read the complete review

Paul Coelho was born in Brazil in 1949. He always wanted an artistic career but his father was an engineer and thought his ideas of being a writer were a sign of mental instability. When he was only 17 his father put him in a mental institution for electroconvulsive therapy twice. He was sent there again after he became involved with a theatre group and was working as a journalist. Despite this difficult start to his career Coelho has become a worldwide best seller. His first book was written after he had walked the Santiago de Compostello pilgrimage trial in Northern Spain, the book was called 'The Pilgrimage'. His next book was 'The Alchemist' which was not an ...  Read the complete review