The Alchemist
The Pilgrimage
The Valkyries
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
The Fifth Mountain
The Devil and Miss Prym
Manual of the Warrior of Light
Eleven Minutes
The Zahir
Like the Flowing River
The Witch of Portobello
Brida
The Winner Stands Alone
Aleph
Manuscript Found in Accra
Behold I give unto you power to tread
on serpents…and nothing shall by
any means hurt you.
Luke 10:19
For S.T. de L, who began to help me without my realising it.
Table of Contents
On 11 November 1997, Veronika decided that the moment to kill herself had – at last! – arrived. She carefully cleaned the room that she rented in a convent, turned off the heating, brushed her teeth and lay down.
She picked up the four packs of sleeping pills from her bedside table. Instead of crushing them and mixing them with water, she decided to take them one by one, because there is always a gap between intention and action, and she wanted to feel free to turn back half way. However, with each pill she swallowed, she felt more convinced: after five minutes the packs were empty.
Since she didn’t know exactly how long it would take her to lose consciousness, she had placed on the bed that month’s issue of a French magazine, Homme, which had just arrived in the library where she worked. She had no particular interest in computer science, but, as she leafed through the magazine, she came across an article about a computer game (one of those CD-Roms), created by Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian writer she had happened to meet at a lecture in the café at the Grand Union Hotel. They had exchanged a few words and she had ended up being invited by his publisher to join them for supper. There were a lot of people there, though, and they hadn’t had a chance to talk in depth about anything.
The fact that she had met the author, however, led her to think that he was part of her world, and that reading an article about his work could help pass the time. While she was waiting for death, Veronika started