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My dream was, and still is, to be a writer." Coelho would leave his lucrative career as a songwriter and pursue writing full-time. 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. In an interview, Coelho stated ", I was very happy in the things I was doing. On the path, he had a spiritual awakening, which he described autobiographically in The Pilgrimage. In 1986 Coelho walked the 500-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. Together they had previously spent half the year in Rio de Janeiro and the other half in a country house in the Pyrenees Mountains of France, but now the couple reside permanently in Geneva, Switzerland. Ĭoelho married artist Christina Oiticica in 1980. Coelho also worked as an actor, journalist and theatre director before pursuing his writing career. In 1974, by his account, he was arrested for "subversive" activities and tortured by the ruling military government, who had taken power ten years earlier and viewed his lyrics as left-wing and dangerous. He is often accused that these songs were rip-offs of foreign songs not well known in Brazil at the time.

Composing with Raul led to Coelho being associated with magic and occultism, due to the content of some songs. Upon his return to Brazil, Coelho worked as a songwriter, composing lyrics for Elis Regina, Rita Lee, and Brazilian icon Raul Seixas. One year later, he dropped out and lived life as a hippie, traveling through South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe and started using drugs in the 1960s. They did not do that to destroy me, they did that to save me." Īt his parents' wishes, Coelho enrolled in law school and abandoned his dream of becoming a writer. Coelho later remarked that "It wasn't that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn't know what to do. At 17, Coelho's parents committed him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20. Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and attended a Jesuit school. His novel The Alchemist became an international best-seller and he has published 30 more books since then. j uː, - j oʊ/ KWEL-yoo, koo- EL-yoo, -⁠yoh, Portuguese: born 24 August 1947) is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002.