The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian novelist who bears the title of the all-time best selling Portuguese language author. He boasts an over 200 million copies sold which includes, his most famous work, being reviewed here.

The Alchemist was published in Portuguese in 1988, and published in English in 1993
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(This post is a review, and not a summary)


Ever since its publication in English and other various languages since the early 90's, this book has slowly climbed its way to the top in being one of the most known stories of international best-sellers. For whatever it means, it has also been on the "most loved" section of books in Barnes & Noble.


In my opinion, as much love and praise as this book gets, I didn't find it too terribly exciting. However, I did like it more than I disliked it. The story begins with the protagonist, an Andalusian boy named Santiago who's a shepherd. I did not get a sense of the time period in which this story takes place, but since it has to do with the practice of alchemy around places like Egypt, it can be anywhere from 3500 b.c. to 1720, which is the time that would give birth to the first remnants of what's known today as chemistry. More precisely, the appearance of characters in the story that practiced Islam and belief in Allah would hint to the time period of the story being at least after 632 CE, which is the date of Muhammad's death.

I can't put any blame on the author for writing a book that's based on chemistry's ancestor, because during the times when alchemy was prominent, so were strange beliefs in all types of numinous phenomena. Perhaps this is why this book doesn't strike me as "too terribly exciting", because the characters are only as intelligent and insightful as can be their intellectuals at the time. This means that we're talking about a pre-enlightenment, or even pre-renaissance period. Now this wouldn't really matter if the book wasn't obviously trying to instill a lesson or moral precept onto you. This is the hint I was getting from The Alchemist, and the lessons the characters were attempting to teach Santiago were paradoxically both powerful and boring.

What do I mean by that? Well, one of the key proposals (and I think I can say with confidence, the main lesson) that kept being repeated throughout the entire book, was to follow "your personal legend", or so to say your dreams. Quite literally actually, because Santiago's personal legend was to make a pilgrimage to Egypt and find a treasure near the pyramids, which he acknowledged (with the help of a gypsy woman) from a recurring dream he had. It is important to give the distinction that the book refers to childhood dreams in specific, and not adult aspirations. This is powerful in the sense that one does not regularly give serious time and thought into what one used to fantasize about as a child, even with the advantage of hindsight as an adult. The book in fact (the character Melchizedek) suggests that it is through some "mysterious powerful force" that we in fact lose sight of our childhood fantasies and dreams when we become adults, so the very becoming of an adult works to one's disadvantage in remembering the kinds of dreams one used to think about as a child. The lesson is also boring in the sense that "go and follow your dreams" cannot be anymore cliche`.

Around the middle of the book, I had found that the constant heavy personification of the heart started to become too cheesy for my taste. There's an infamous fine line between poetic and cheesy, and it's easy to cross that barrier, especially when you're having a full length conversation in the middle of a desert with a guy who claims to be a 200 year old practicing alchemist about how you should listen to your heart.

Like all interesting books, the main character manages to find love throughout the way. She's a girl named Fatima who lives in an oasis, which seems lovely, except that Santiago ends up falling in love with Fatima almost immediately after he meets her. With all the best of intentions the author has in mind to establish a cute spark of love inside the protagonist, I cannot help but think how borderline obsessive that kind of behavior is. He even tells Fatima that he loves her and wants to be with her just shortly after he meets her. It actually made me laugh at how silly the timing was.

However, Fatima was not just some girl put in the story as a means of adding another tested-and-proven ingredient of what makes a popular novel. She provides with an unexpected internal conflict in the protagonist that's integral to the plot. Bad novels put the ingredients in the pot without any care for concentration and quantity, but good novels like The Alchemist tie the ingredients together in a way that make them crucial to the integrity of the plot. Fatima, of course, has a hold on Santiago, which makes him confused on what his heart genuinely wants. I personally loved the conversation he had about her with the alchemist. In a sentence or two, the alchemist told him that if he stays with Fatima and doesn't venture out to obtain the treasure and complete his personal legend, he will regret it, and Fatima will eventually feel guilty for making that happen. However, if he leaves Fatima, ventures out to obtain the treasure, and comes back to Fatima, he'll have the treasure, and he'll know whether Fatima's love was worth it or not based on whether she waited for him or decided to forget about him. The subtext there is that the alchemist told Santiago not to think with his penis. In fact, that should be the title of the book: "Follow your dreams and don't think with your penis."

But aside from all of the things I found cheesy or void of excitement, the rest of the book struck me as a pleasure. The classic adventure story where the boy ventures out to find some treasure is always nostalgic to read. Needless to say, the whole time I was reading I thought that the treasure was going to be a metaphor, but Santiago actually ends up finding an actual physical treasure, which was a nice unexpected surprise. Overall, because of the nostalgia factor of the plot, compounded with the popularity of the book, I found the book worth it to read, and I definitely didn't finish the book with a frown on my face, which is always a good thing.