"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the
boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky."
Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering
itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of
its dreams."The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist.
The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, above all, following our dreams.
Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. The Alchemist is such a book. With over a million and a half copies sold around the world, The Alchemist has already established itself as a modern classic, universally admired. Paulo Coelho's charming fable, now available in English for the first time, will enchant and inspire an even wider audience of readers for generations to come.
Here is a review from Amazon.com:
Like the one-time bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Alchemist
presents a simple fable, based on simple truths and places it in a
highly unique situation. And though we may sniff a bestselling formula,
it is certainly not a new one: even the ancient tribal storytellers knew
that this is the most successful method of entertaining an audience
while slipping in a lesson or two. Brazilian storyteller Paulo Coehlo
introduces Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who one night dreams of a
distant treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. And so he's off: leaving
Spain to literally follow his dream.
Along the way he meets many
spiritual messengers, who come in unassuming forms such as a camel
driver and a well-read Englishman. In one of the Englishman's books,
Santiago first learns about the alchemists--men who believed that if a
metal were heated for many years, it would free itself of all its
individual properties, and what was left would be the "Soul of the
World." Of course he does eventually meet an alchemist, and the ensuing
student-teacher relationship clarifies much of the boy's misguided
agenda, while also emboldening him to stay true to his dreams. "My heart
is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy confides to the
alchemist one night as they look up at a moonless night.
"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself," the alchemist replies. "And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity." --Gail Hudson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself," the alchemist replies. "And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity." --Gail Hudson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
