Paulo Coelho: Las Confesiones Del Peregrino (Documento) (Spanish Edition) [Paperback]

Juan Arias (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: Spanish

Product Details

• Paperback: 242 pages
• Publisher: Planeta Publishing; 1. ed edition (January 1, 1999)
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN-10: 8408029568
• ISBN-13: 978-8408029564
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,071,184 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

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful dialogue, May 31, 2002

By 

Bron Mitchell "bronm" (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paulo Coelho: Las Confesiones Del Peregrino (Documento) (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)

Less of a biography than a dialogue between author Juan Arias and interviewee Paulo Coelho, I found that I enjoyed this book more than I had expected to. I have only ever read a couple of Coelho's books and was intrigued by them, although not overly convinced as to why they were bestsellers. Having read this book, however, I have become more appreciative of Coelho's writing and style, knowing and understanding a little more of the things in his life which led him to share his books with the world.

In this dialogue, Coelho talks openly and honestly about his Catholic-Jesuit upbringing, his experiences of a mental hospital, prison, torture, black magic, and drugs before his conversion back to a Catholic spiritual tradition. He also speaks freely on more abstract concepts: politics, nationality, his understanding of 'the feminine', and what it means for him to be a writer.

What I especially appreciated about this book was the style in which it is written. It is clearly a conversation between two deep thinkers, and it was nice to have Coelho's own words in print, rather than it all being paraphrased by the author. Although I have to say that Arias played his role as interviewer very well - he doesn't dominate the conversation, but nor does he let Coelho do all the talking.

The reason I give this 4 stars rather than 5 is that there were a number of times when I would have liked Coelho to elaborate on certain points. Sometimes this was because I found a thread interesting and I wished he had run with it for a little longer; other times it was simply for the sake of clarity.

(Finally, I should just note that I read an English translation of the book and not the original Spanish version. There is at least one available in Australia, not sure about other countries.)