The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

“The Alchemist follows the journey of an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago. Believing a recurring dream to be prophetic, he asks a Romani fortune-teller in a nearby town about its meaning. The woman interprets the dream as a prophecy telling the boy that he will discover a treasure at the Egyptian pyramids.”

Synopsis from Wikipedia.

Date read: 12/06/17

When I first read the book title I was thinking about the anime called “Fullmetal Alchemist” as in finding the philosopher stone and talks about how life is a cycle and also the 7 sins. Apparently this book does talk about how the alchemist turns the metal into gold but with a very different concept.

This is kind of like self-motivate and self-discovery book. This whole book evolve around the picture of “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”. Indeed, when you want something so bad in your life you will work your way through it. You meet with some peoples that are helpful on the way in reminding you how you have got to this point and how you should never give up.

It is a very simple message but depicts in a story telling mode. The storyline told that how the main character—Santiago has left his comfort zone to find the treasure that the prophecy had said about him. He travel out the country to a foreign land without knowing the language. He did go through hardship moment while he was there. There are moment when he was unsure of which way he should go because he can either go ahead to chase his dream or he could go home with all his success till this moment.

In the end, he reach the pyramids as foretell by the fortune-teller. He did not find the treasure under the pyramids whilst he was also beaten up and rob by thieves that was also intended to find the treasure. In the final moment, he did realize what the treasure that the fortune-teller are talking about because one of the thief tries to illustrate the worthlessness of dreams by telling Santiago about his own dream. It was the church where he always slept while he was a shepherd while dreamed about the pyramid and under the sycamore tree he dig up the treasure. That’s Santiago treasure.

Some people might not liking it because the whole book was on and on talking about that one whole concept. I did not agree that this book is only focusing on telling us you should be brave, get out there and chase you dream which might be only first part of the story. In fact, this book also teaches us the life lessons for example, when Santiago was travelling through the dessert he was always indulge in his books but then he realize that he should start listen to the ‘Soul of the World.” Which this is also quite an important message throughout his journey in searching the alchemist.

In terms of the writing style, I wasn’t quite liking it at first because the novel wrote in a very very storytelling and poetic (some) way as in you need to think beyond the story to really get to the message. After I finish up the book I was impressed by this writing as the author must have put a lot of thinking and hard work in how to slip the message into the storyline without getting away from the meaning. In fact, by ignoring the whole storyline you could see a lot of little small message in the story according to different scenery.

I think this book is worth rereading over different period of your life. As we went through our life there might have been prosperity or hardship moment and through that moment our perspective might have changed we could rediscover a different message in the book. Here is a link of a blog that talks about the powerful life lessons found in this novel http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2015/12/15/10-powerful-life-lessons-from-the-alchemist/.