Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho was born on 24 August 1947 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and attended a Jesuit school. At age 17, Coelho's parents committed him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20. On his parents' wishes, Coelho enrolled in law school and abandoned his dream of becoming a writer. One year later, he dropped out and lived life as a hippie, travelling through South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe. He started using drugs in the 1960s.

Upon his return to Brazil, Coelho worked as a songwriter, composing lyrics for Elis Regina, Rita Lee, and Raul Seixas. In 1974, Coelho was arrested for "subversive" activities and was tortured while in custody. Coelho also worked as an actor, journalist, and theatre director before pursuing his writing career. In 1982, Coelho published his first book, Hell Archives, which was not very successful. In 1986, he contributed to the Practical Manual of Vampirism, although he later tried to take it off the shelves since he considered it to be of poor quality. Also in 1986, Coelho walked the Camino de Santiago in northwestern Spain. Coelho later described the experience as a personal spiritual turning point. Afterwards, Coelho wrote The Pilgrimage, published in 1987. The following year, Coelho wrote The Alchemist and published it through a small Brazilian publishing house that made an initial print run of 900 copies and decided not to reprint it. He subsequently found a bigger publishing house, and with the publication of his next book Brida, The Alchemist saw further commercial success. HarperCollins published the book in 1994. Later, it became an international bestseller. In a 2009 interview with Forward Magazine, Coelho stated that the Sufi tradition had been an influence on him, particularly when writing The Alchemist and later The Zahir. In 2016, he was contacted by basketball player Kobe Bryant, who wanted to discuss a children's book project with him. Some months before Bryant's death in a helicopter crash in January 2020, they started to write the book together. Following Bryant's death, Coelho chose to discontinue the project. Four of his novels – The Pilgrimage, Hippie, The Valkyries, and Aleph – are autobiographical, while the majority of the rest are fictional. Other books, like Maktub, The Manual of the Warrior of Light, and Like the Flowing River, are collections of essays, newspaper columns, or selected teachings.

Coelho married the artist Christina Oiticica in 1980. They previously spent half the year in Rio de Janeiro and the other half in a French country house in the Pyrenees, but now the couple reside in Geneva, Switzerland.