Brida [Paperback]

Paulo Coelho (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Harper Collins (2008)
• ISBN-10: 1607515385
• ISBN-13: 978-1607515388
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,340,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The Brazilian author PAULO COELHO was born in 1947 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Before dedicating his life completely to literature, he worked as theatre director and actor, lyricist and journalist.

In 1986, PAULO COELHO did the pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella, an experience later to be documented in his book The Pilgrimage.

In the following year, COELHO published The Alchemist. Slow initial sales convinced his first publisher to drop the novel, but it went on to become one of the best selling Brazilian books of all time.

Other titles include Brida (1990), The Valkyries (1992), By the river Piedra I sat Down and Wept (1994), the collection of his best columns published in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S'o Paulo entitle Maktub (1994), the compilation of texts Phrases (1995), The Fifth Mountain (1996), Manual of a Warrior of Light (1997), Veronika decides to die (1998), The Devil and Miss Prym (2000), the compilation of traditional tales in Stories for parents, children and grandchildren (2001), Eleven Minutes (2003), The Zahir (2005)

During the months of March, April, May and June 2006, Paulo Coelho traveled to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella in 1986. He also held surprise book signings - announced one day in advance - in some cities along the way, to have a chance to meet his readers. In ninety days of pilgrimage the author traveled around the globe and took the famous Transiberrian train that took him to Vladivostok. During this experience Paulo Coelho launched his blog Walking the Path - The Pilgrimage in order to share with his readers his impressions.

Since this first blog Paulo Coelho has expanded his presence in the internet with his daily blogs in Wordpress (http://paulocoelhoblog.com), Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/paulocoelho) & Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Paulo-Coelho/11777366210). He is equally present in media sharing sites such as Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=paulabraconnot) and Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulo_coelho/sets) , offering on a regular basis not only texts but also videos and pictures to his readers.

From this intensive interest and use of the Internet sprang his bold new project: The Experimental Witch http://paulocoelhoblog.com/experimental-witch where he invites his readers to adapt to the screen his book The Witch of Portobello. You can still subscribe in this experiment!

Indeed Paulo Coelho is a firm believer of Internet as a new media and is the first Best-selling author to actively support online free distribution http://piratecoelho.wordpress.com of his work.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A nice introduction to a great writer, July 15, 2008

By 

Jackie Blem (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brida: A Novel (Hardcover)

I've never read anything by Paulo Coelho before, so I was rather surprised by the pagan spirituality of this little novel. It's the story of Brida, an Irish girl in training to become a witch. It is full of beautifully worded prose--I found myself making little tics and stars beside many paragraphs to go back and examine again (my apologies to those who get the ARC from me, lol). There is some seriously high minded spirituality folded into this simple book about a woman's quest to learn to use her powers and her heart. I was especially intrigued with the Catholic Christianity woven within the more traditional magical teachings and philosophies. This is, apparently, one of Coelho's earlier works that has finally been translatted from the original Portuguese. I found it a good way to whet my appetite for his other works before I come to a decision of what it is I think of him as a writer.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Simple, November 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Brida (Paperback)

The fact that it presents something so complicated as love with such a simple explanation as wizardry, makes a person who is not able to read between the lines,think of it as a uninteresting book. I loved the way the book calls to the feelings of each one of the readers to be for or against the beliefs of the character... Read it if you can!

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Was this written by the same author who wrote the Alchemist? Hard to believe, August 17, 2008

By 

Valerie White (santa cruz, ca usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brida: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is one of the worst books I have ever read. I have always enjoyed this author's works, but this was awful. He should stick to writing what he knows, obviously it is not the concepts of Wicca. It is a very misleading book for people who might think they are actually being taught something about Wicca and modern witchcraft. it is strictly fiction and nonsense. Dancing naked around a fire and a woman named Wicca quoting Jesus all the time- puleese!! It's ridiculous, and not only that, but it is badly written and boring. If you want to learn about soulmates and Irish Druids there are many good books that teach the reality of such things. You don't need to dance naked to be a "wise one" which is what wicca means. And you certainly would never want a teacher quoting a bunch of christianity at you if you wanted to learn about the old religion. St Patrick and the church were killing Druids and pagans (the country people who had their own religion) not snakes. This book was just plain silly. I kept reading hoping it would get better, but it got worse.