开卷有益

今天发烧的对象是Paulo Coelho（他的官网http://www.paulocoelho.com.br/engl/），也就是《炼金术士》的作者。昨天一口气买了他的五本小说，包括《Eleven Minutes: A Novel (P.S.)》、《The Fifth Mountain》、《By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept: A Novel of Forgiveness》、《The Alchemist 》、《The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom》。

According to wikipedia,

"In 1982 Coelho published his first book, Hell Archives, which failed to make any kind of impact. In 1985 he contributed to the Practical Manual of Vampirism, although he later tried to take it off the shelves, since he considered it “of bad quality”. 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.

Coelho has sold over 86 million books in over 150 countries worldwide and his works have been translated into 56 languages. He has received numerous literary awards from a variety of countries, including La Legion d'Honneur (France), Grinzane Cavour (Italy), His other novels include The Alchemist, based on Borges' Tale of two dreamers, which sold more than 11 million copies worldwide and has been translated into some 41 languages; it is also a movie in progress produced by Laurence Fishburne, who is a fan of Coelho. In addition he has written the collection of his best columns published in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo entitle Maktub, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, and The Valkyries. Despite the popularity of Coelho's works in Iran, his 2005 novel The Zahir was banned there, with 1,000 copies being confiscated [1], but a week later aforesaid book "The Zahir" appeared again in bookstores.

He also adapted The Gift (Henry Drummond) and Love letters of a prophet (Kalil Gibran).

His books have appeared on bestseller lists in countries not only in Brazil, but in the UK, the USA, France, Germany, Iran, Canada, Italy, Israel, Finland, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Poland and Lithuania. He is the all time best-selling Portuguese language author."

I don't know how many of Paulo Coelho's books have been translated into Chinese, but 孙成敖's translation certainly capture the spirit of Coelho's writting. The most interesting part of Coelho is not his writing, but his way of living his writing. His major books are based on his own trips at many continents, over the past decades. On the one hand, he writes about the past, present and the future; on the other hand, he transforms the time and space through his pursuit of spirituality.

His early books were from his exprience of trips to Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, as well as Europe and North Africa in 1970s. In 1986 he walked along the Road of Santiago, an ancient Spanish pilgrimage and his book The Pilgrimage describes his final initiation.

His way of writing sometimes reminds me of the Bible, but with more touch of humane side of being. Often time, he put the philosophy of life into trival details of life. In this sense, you can't help thinking something like "一花一世界,一叶一菩提"。