Brazil: Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist · Global Voices
David Sasaki

“By all rights, Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist should have single-handedly delivered a knock-out blow to any popular conception that Latin American literature is ‘good’ literature. The novel is, simply put, execrable tripe.” So begins Posthegemony's ranting review of what it terms Coelho's famous work of “anti-literature”. Still, Jon admits that “the Alchemist must do something for someone–perhaps even for 85 million someones.”