The Alchemist - Gift Edition Hardcover - 2006

About this book

From the rear cover

"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."

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.

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.

First Edition Identification

The first edition of The Alchemist was published as O Alquimista in Portuguese in 1988 by Editora Rocco Ltd, a small Brazilian publishing house. The first English-language edition, The Alchemist: A Fable about Following Your Dream, was published by HarperCollins in 1993. It had an initial print run of 2,000 copies, which include a full number line to 1, and 'FIRST EDITION' on the copyright page. 

Media reviews

Citations

• Ebony, 06/01/2015, Page 28