Top 10 Amazing Facts about Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho. photo by Campus Party Europa 2010-Wikimedia

Top 10 Amazing Facts about Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho de Souza is a known Brazilian lyricist and novelist and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002.

Coelho is known for his novel The Alchemist and in 2014, he uploaded his personal paper online to create a virtual Paulo Coelho Foundation.

Coelho founded the Paulo Coelho Institute in 1996, which provides support to children and the elderly.

Learn more about Paulo Coelho in these top 10 amazing facts.

1. During his Childhood, Paulo Coelho Wanted to Become a Writer

Paulo Coelho was born on August 24, 1947, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and attended a Jesuit school and always wanted to become a writer. 

When he told his mother about been a writer, she responded, “My dear, your father is an engineer. He’s a logical, reasonable man with a very clear vision of the world. Do you actually know what it means to be a writer?”

At 17, Coelho’s introversion and opposition to following a traditional path, his parents committed him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20.

Coelho later remarked about his time in a mental institution “ It wasn’t that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn’t know what to do… They didn’t do that to destroy me, and they did that to save me.”

At his parents’ wishes, Coelho enrolled to study law and abandoned his dream of becoming a writer. He later dropped out of law.

After one year and lived he life as a hippie, traveling South Africa, North America, Europe and Mexico and started using drugs in the 1960s.

2. Coelho Once Worked as a Songwriter

Photo by Eirik Solheim-Wikimedia

When Coelho returned to Brazil, he worked as a songwriter, composing lyrics for Elis Regina, Rita Lee and Brazilian icon Raul Seixas. He also worked as an actor, journalist and theatre director before pursuing his writing career.

Composing song lyrics with Raul led to Coelho being associated with magic and occultism due to the content of some songs. Coelho was often accused that these songs were rip-offs of foreign songs not well known in Brazil then.

By his account, in 1974, 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.

3. Coelho had a Spiritual Awakening in 1986

In 1986, Coelho trekked the 500-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. While on the path, he had a spiritual awakening which he narrated 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 later left his career as a songwriter and pursued writing full-time.

4. Coelho Published His First Book in 1982

In 1982, he published his first book Hell Archives which failed to make a substantial impact. Coelho contributed to the Practical Manual of Vampirism in 1986, and he later tried to take it off the shelves since he considered it “of bad quality.”

After Coelho made the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in 1986, Coelho wrote The Pilgrimage, published in 1987.

Coelho was trying to overcome his procrastination about launching his writing career. He decided, “ If I see a white feather today, that is a sign that God is giving me that I have to write a new book.” 

He saw one in a shop window; he began writing that day. The following year he wrote The Alchemist.

5. Paulo Coelho’s Novel the Alchemist Became an International Best-Seller

Image by Katrin Gilger-Wikimedia

In 1988, Coelho wrote The Alchemist and published it through a small Brazilian publishing house that made an initial print run of 900 copies and decided not to reprint it.

Coelho found a large publishing house and with the publication of his next book Brida, The Alchemist, took off. HarperCollins agreed to publish the book in 1994. 

Later, The Alchemist became an international bestseller. The novel follows a young Andalusian Shepherd on his journey to the Pyramids of Egypt after recurring dreams of finding a treasure.

In an interview in 2009 with the Syrian Forward Magazine, Coelho stated that the Sufi tradition had influenced him, mainly when writing The Alchemist and The Zahir.

6. After The Alchemist, Coelho Wrote At Least One Novel Every Two Years

Since publishing The Alchemist, he has written at least one novel every two years. Four of the Hippie, Aleph, The Pilgrimage and The Valkyries are autobiographical, while the rest are broadly fictional.

Other books like Maktub, Like the Following River and The Manual of the Warrior of Light are a collection of newspaper columns, essays, or selected teaching. Coelho’s work has been published in more than 170 countries and translated into eighty-three languages.

Altogether, his books have sold 320 million copies. On December 22, 2016, he was listed by UK-based company Richtopia at number 2 in the list of 200 most influential contemporary authors.

7. Coelho had Started Working on a project With Kobe Bryant

In 2016, basketball player Kobe Bryant contacted Coelho, who wanted to discuss a children’s book project with him. Some months before Kobe Bryant’s death in a helicopter crash in January 2022, they had started writing the book together.

Coelho decided to delete the whole draft and said publishing the book without him would not make sense. Coelho never revealed how many pages had been written or the book title.

8. Paulo Coelho has Created Relationships with Readers Through social media

Photo by Eirik Solheim-Wikimedia

Coelho posts up to three weeks on his blog and he has millions fans on both Facebook and Twitter. In The Wall Street Journal in August 2014, he discussed his relationship with readers through social media platforms.

In November 2014. Coelho finished uploading around 80,000 documents-manuscripts, photos, reader letters, and diaries and created a virtual Paulo Coelho Foundation, together with the physical foundation based in Geneva.

9. Coelho is One of The Richest and Most Legendary Writers Ever

Coelho has a unique style and storytelling abilities and became one of the most celebrated literary figures. His works are very creative and his personal story is full of twists and turns; his novels explore the themes of self-awareness, love, solitude, sexual desire, traveling and chasing one’s dream.

10. Paulo Coelho Got Married in 1980

Coelho married artist Christina Oiticica in 1980. They had spent half the year in Rio de Janeiro and the other half in a country house in the Pyrenees Mountains of France. Still, now the couple resides permanently in Geneva, Switzerland.