The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho's book The Alchemist, an International best-seller, has been with me for many years now; But it was only recently that I read it. However, I have read many of the curious sentences and phrases in this book earlier, like "When you really want something, the entire Universe conspires in helping you to achieve it", which I think is the most famous one. Many such sentences in this book are very popular slogans which have been used in email signatures by many people. In fact, people had run out of such curious statements that they had started looking for lesser ones like " "Let's sell tea to the people who climb the hill" -- Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist", etc., and I used to think that they were densely meaningful in the context of the story told in the book.

The Alchemist starts as a very readable and interesting folktale. A shepherd of Spain dreams of a treasure near the Pyramids, and a strange man - actually, a king - whom he meets, inspires him to follow his dream and reach his destiny. The king also gives him a few tips about following the omens. The shepherd sells all his sheep and starts for Egypt. On the way, his money is stolen and he is forced to halt at a coastal town for nearly an year to make money for further travel. I found the book to be interesting till this point, but soon the author steps aside from the framework of a fable. What we see later is that the story goes into background and a repetition of the phrases about dreams, destiny, omens, beginner's luck, love, language of the heart, soul of the heart, heart of the soul, soul of the universe and many such similar things occupy most of the pages, which left me confused regarding what the author is trying to say. These sort of keywords make the book appear like having several deep philosophical meanings in it, and I could see shades of teachings from many world religions in many passages (like seeing the entire universe in a grain of sand, soul of the heart becoming a part of soul of Universe (?), the Buddhist outlook about suffering, etc.). But I felt that these passages are open to several interpretations, none of which have anything thought-provokingly novel in them. In the end, the shepherd returns to the place where he had had his dream - apparently, the treasure was at that location itself, and he has been searching for it all around.

If taken as a simple story, I couldn't appreciate Alchemist much - In fact I felt it to be a tiring read. If taken as a work on spirituality, it lacks the clarity of expression which I believe is a must for such works.