Casting a literary spell

His latest indulgence as an author has yielded yet another bestseller (read Brida). Paulo Coelho shares his success story with Anamika Chatterjee in this e-mail interview.

Themes like spirituality and mysticism are recurrent in most of your works. How do you rate Brida?
When I start a new book, I approach myself from a different angle. In The Alchemist, for example, I was trying to explain what writing meant to me. The way I found to do this was through a metaphor. In Brida, I explore the life of a woman who dives into sorcery and experiments with different magical traditions. Through her life and character, I explore many themes that are dear to me, such as The Great Mother, pagan religions and the different perceptions of love.
All stories, characters bare the seal of my personality, but each has its own path, its own identity. It’s only by living intensively that I’m able to gather enough experiences, emotions, that later on guide me when I decide to write.

Your books are said to have “changed the lives of many”.
Readers are always very inventive. I remember once an Indian reader sent me a letter saying that she had offered one of my books to the Ganges. I thought this was such a poetic and beautiful thing to do.

Brida was written in 1990. Why is it that it came out for publication after almost two decades?
When I wrote this book, ideas such as the feminine face of
God were still alien to most people, but now, I see a shift in perception — people are more open now to the intuitive perception of the world and are less easily seduced by the fixed rules of the society. And that’s why I came out with Brida in its first English translation. I think her time has come.

Would you say that there’s a certain formula for a bestseller?
I don’t have a ready-made formula to apply when I embark on a new book, but I’m always controlled by my discipline, compassion and a sincere eagerness to understand myself.

Any message for Indian readers. I think the best advice is always to not follow any advice. Try life by yourself. Freedom is people making their decisions by themselves, not giving it away for a guru to answer and decide for them.