Product Description

The new novel from internationally acclaimed author Paulo Coelho -- a dramatic story of love, life and death that shows us all why every second of our existence is a choice we all make between living and dying. Veronika has everything she could wish for. She is young and pretty, has plenty of boyfriends, a steady job, a loving family. Yet she is not happy; something is lacking in her life, and one morning she decides to die. She takes an overdose of sleeping pills, only to wake up some time later in the local hospital. There she is told that her heart is damaged and she has only a few days to live. The story follows Veronika through these intense days as to her surprise she finds herself experiencing feelings she has never really felt before. Against all odds she finds herself falling in love and even wanting to live again!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5859 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"On 11 November 1997, Veronika decided that the moment to kill herself had--at last!--arrived": so begins Paulo Coelho's extraordinary new novel, Veronika Decides to Die. Renowned for the international success of The Alchemist, Coelho has secured his reputation as an outstanding storyteller and a key figure in world literature (his work has been translated into over 40 languages). Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, Veronika Decides to Die is a compelling story of a woman's struggle with and against life, told with Coelho's wit, subtlety and economy. On the track of whatever it is that makes life worth living, Coelho plots Veronika's fate with infinite care, weaving the mystery of her decision to take her own life into the themes of national identity--Veronika is a citizen of Slovenia, "that strange country that no one seemed quite able to place"--and madness.

Veronika does not die; instead, she wakes up in Villette--the "famous and much-feared lunatic asylum"--only to be told that, having damaged her heart irreparably, she has just a few days to live. What she faces now is a waiting game and the strange world of Villette: the rules and regulations which govern the lives of its inmates and the doctors who treat them. Coelho's question may be a familiar one: crudely, who, or what, is mad? But his fiction is a remarkable, sometimes chilling, response to it. "Everyone has an unusual story to tell" is the starting-point of the new treatment initiated at Villette by the enigmatic Dr Igor; it's also the insight from which this book takes off to explore the impact of a "slow, irreparable death" on a young woman and the mad men and women around her. --Vicky Lebeau

Review
'Coelho's writing is beautifully poetic but his message is what counts! he gives me hope and puts a smile on my face' DAILY EXPRESS 'His books have had a life-enhancing impact on millions of people' THE TIMES 'One of the few to deserve the term "Publishing Phenomenon"' THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

From the Author
It's a mad, mad world...
When I was 18, I believed that my world and that of my parents could coexist peacefully. It was 1966, the beginning of the blackest period of Brazil's military dictatorship, a period when that external repression was gradually becoming internalized. I did my best to get good marks at my Jesuit school. I worked every afternoon, but at night I wanted to live out my dream of being an artist. Not knowing quite where to begin, I became involved in an amateur theater group. Although I had no desire to act professionally, at least I was among people with whom I felt some affinity.

One night I came home drunk, and the next morning I was awaked by two burly male nurses. My mother was crying, my father doing his best to hide any feelings. "It's for your own good," he said. "We're just going to have some tests done." And thus began my journey through various psychiatric hospitals. I was admitted, I was given all kinds of different treatments and I ran away at the first opportunity, traveling around for as long as I could bear, then going back to my parents. After a honeymoon period, I again started to get into what they called "bad company," and the nurses reappeared. When I came out of the hospital for the third time I was nearly 20. This time something had changed. Although I again got into "bad company," my parents were growing reluctant to have me readmitted to a mental hospital. Unbeknown to me, they were by then convinced that I was a hopeless case and preferred to keep me with them and to support me for the rest of my life., I experienced a period of great joy as I tried to exercise my so-called freedom, in order, finally, to live the "artist's life." I stopped studying, and I dedicated myself exclusively to the theater and to frequenting=20 the bars favored by intellectuals. For one long year, I did exactly as I pleased, but then the theater group was broken up by the political police, the bars became infiltrated by spies, my stories were rejected by every publisher I sent them to and none of the girls I knew wanted to go out with me I was a young man without a future.

So, one day I decided to trash my bedroom. It was a way of saying: "You see, I can't live in the real world. I can't get a job, I can't realize my dream. I think you're absolutely right: I am mad, and I want to go back to the mental hospital!" When I had finished wrecking my room, I was relieved to see that my parents were phoning the psychiatric hospital. However, the doctor who usually dealt with me was on holiday. The nurses arrived with a junior doctor in tow. He saw me sitting amid the torn-up books, broken records and ripped curtains and asked my family and the nurses to leave the room. "Stop playing around," he said. "I've been reading your case history. You're not mad at all, and I won't admit you." He left the room, wrote a prescription for some tranquilizers and (so I found out later) told my parents that I was suffering from "admission syndrome" and using illness as an alternative to life. My parents never again had me=admitted to a mental institution.

From then on, I could no longer seek comfort in madness. So, at 38, I decided to write my first book and to risk entering into a battle I had always subconsciously feared: the battle for a dream. I found a publisher, and the first book, "The Pilgrimage," led me to "The Alchemist," which led me to others, which led to translations, which led to lectures and conferences all over the world.

In 1997, after a promotional tour across three continents, I began to notice a very odd phenomenon: what I had wanted on that day when I trashed my bedroom seemed to be something a lot of other people wanted, too. People prefer to live in a huge asylum, religiously following rules written by who knows whom, rather than fight for the right to be different.

I decided to write "Veronika Decides to Die" in the third person because I knew that the important subject to be addressed was not what I personally experienced in mental institutions but, rather, the risks we run by being different and yet our horror of being the same. When I finished, I went and talked to my father. My parents had never forgiven themselves. I always told them that it hadn't really been that bad and that prison (for I was imprisoned three times for political reasons) had left far deeper scars, but my parents refused to believe me and spent the rest of their lives blaming themselves.

"I've written a book about a mental institution," I said to my 85-year-old father. "It's a fictional work, but there are a couple of pages where I speak as myself. It means going public about the time I spent in mental hospitals." My father looked me in the eye and said, " Are you sure it won't harm you in anyway?" I was sure. "Then go ahead. I'm tired of secrets."

Paulo Coelho

Customer Reviews

thought-provoked by clear message and simple style
Most of the reviews here compare 'Veronika' to 'the Alchemist', and I think that the comparison is a valuable one. Coelho's message in both books is one of being true to yourself, seeing and accepting the beauty of your own life. This is indeed a deeply personal lesson worth learning. However, I think it's better expressed in 'the Alchemist' than here. Coehlo writes in simple and accessible prose, which gives his message a certain charm. But I think really if you've read one Coelho book, then unless you appreciate the style more than the message, then there's no need to read any more. 'The Alchemist' is enough Coelho for me. If the message of self-realisation interests you then I'd recommend Hesse's 'Siddharta' instead of 'Veronika'. Having said that 'Veronika' is not a bad read, just a re-hashing of the same ideas Coelho has expressed before.

A great inspiring novel that you must have
After "The Alchemist" I think this is his second best novel. I've read almost every of his books and this author is really AMAZING, you never get tired of him! All of his books have a message, hidden or not, they all have a message: In "Veronika decides to die" the message is that you have to LOVE LIFE beneath all... The story is about a "perfect woman" that wants to get rid of her life and how life changes for her when that does not happen, instead she has to live knowing that she will actually die...the end is magnificent!!! If you like Paulo Coelho this book is a MUST from his collection.

Another 'thinker' from Coelho
After I read 'The Alchemist' I wanted to explore more of this authors writings, and 'Veronika decides to die' seemed the natural progression.

Something that struck me, was my visualisation of the little town in Slovenia where Veronika lives was very clear, Sometimes I read books and find the picture in my minds eye to be clouded and interrupted, but in this book it was clear as a bell and sharp. Even the hospital she spends much of her time in: I could almost smell the bleach!

I think the main tone of this story is that life is precious, and we should make the most of it. I guess in the hurly burly day to day events of city life, that can be all to easy to forget, and Coelho tries, and succeeds to wake us up to the fact that there is more to life than work and toil, that we only have to look out of our windows and see the world turning to understand how important life is.

Coelho's writing is poetic and deep, probably not the light relief someone might want on holiday, but these books are I believe important and the message they have, page after page is a message that is good and incredibly simple. There are SO many things to read out there, hundreds of thousands of books to choose from, and of course, choice can only be a good thing. But here is a book, that like 'the alchemist', the story does not leave you when you close the book for the last time. The story and the message will be there every day, and I think will make that day a little bit easier and more fulfilling.