The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” - The alchemist

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is a story about a young shepherd, Santiago and his quest to live his dream or to live his personal legend as they call it in the novel.
When he keeps on getting repeated dreams of a child telling him to go to the pyramids and he will find a treasure he decides to get the dream interpreted. He meets a gypsy and an old king both telling him to following this. King Melchizedek tells the shepherd the importance of following your personal legend and to never give up. Santiago sells his sheep and heads to Africa. During his journey he faces many hardships however doesn't give up. He meets an alchemist whom explains the real truth behind alchemy and an Arabian woman, Fatima, whom he falls in love with. The rest is for everyone to read.

I read this book in portuguese but I'm sure that the book will be just as good in English. When my dad first told me to read it I was a bit apprehensive as it looked like one of those novels that only adults read and that are usually really boring. The Alchemist is a completely different genre to Switched, from my last post, but I recommend it just as much. At the start the novel is not the most interesting but after reading the first chapter I began to get interested in the plot. The plot itself is simple but the meaning behind and what it teaches is wonderful. It is still a fictional story and so everything is exaggerated and some things are written in figuritive language and so not all should be taken to heart. The Alchemist had some valuable lessons such as following your dreams and that we should always fight for them. The novel is a quick read with some very precious lessons, not the type of book I usually read but definitely useful.