Link: http://www.theherald.co.uk/paulocoelho/introvideo PAULO COELHO is, quite simply, one of the world’s most influential writers. His book The Alchemist has sold more than 75 million copies and has been translated into 61 languages.
His fans include ex-President Bill Clinton, Nobel Prize-winner Kenzaburo Oe, actress Julia Roberts and singer Madonna (who rates The Alchemist as one of her favourite books).
The recipient of numerous prestigious awards, Coelho is a storyteller credited with the power to inspire nations and change people’s lives. His previous titles include The Pilgrimage, Eleven Minutes, The Devil and Miss Prym, Veronika Decides to Die and The Zahir.
Coelho’s recent visit to Scotland only confirmed this popularity. At his only UK speaking appearance, the Brazilian author attracted an audience of 600 Herald and Sunday Herald readers to the SECC in Glasgow.
Here we present a series of videocasts of this event.
See Coelho offer the audience an insight into his riveting new novel, The Witch of Portobello. Told in a series of fragments, it pieces together the life of a mysterious woman called Athena through the recorded interviews of those who knew her.
Over the course of the week we will publish further excerpts from this unmissable event.
Part Two
Coelho discusses his strict Jesuit education, his consequential reaction against Catholicism, and subsequent move back to Catholicism.
Growing up, rather than playing football on Sundays, Coelho had to attend mass. At 15, eight years after commencing his Jesuit education, Coelho rejected Catholicism on account of its focus on the suffering and pains of Jesus, as opposed to his miracles and life of healing. He attributes his loss of faith to his being forced to believe.
But after a quasi pilgrimage journey during the "hippy" age, where Coelho experimented with Buddhism, he returned to Catholicism. Realising that one's faith is in one's blood, he recognised his duty to obey Catholic principles as part of collective worship.
Coelho notes that his acclaimed and bestselling novel The Alchemist traces a journey of discovery, and asks questions of the self in order to come to a fuller understanding of one's faith.
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