And that is precisely how I felt mid-way through reading the novel. Because, it covers the subject, which is sex, which I least expected to come out of Paulo Coelho.

I had a mixed feeling after completing the novel and I am really at lack of thoughts where to place this novel. Given that he really touched a subject that is still considered taboo by most of the people.

And this is a truth, one has to read the novel with a very clear mind, that is, if one wants to enjoy the literature value of it. Otherwise you will feel it is another one of the well written sex-flicks. It is well written, no doubts about that, like all other novels by Paulo Coelho.

But it is not something that I would enjoy reading again, like The Alchemist. Though I understand the importance of the subject and the way the novel has been written, and I understand the message conveyed in the novel and truly with it, but for me that’s where it ends. But yes, it is worth reading once, but with a very open mind.

“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the Alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams."

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. The Alchemist is such a book. With over a million and a half copies sold around the world, The Alchemist has already established itself as a modern classic, universally admired. Paulo Coelho’s charming fable, now available in English for the first time, will enchant and inspire an even wider audience of readers for generations to come.

The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist.

The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path and above all, following our dreams.