Crazy for Coelho

Look for a very good interview with Brazilian lyricist and novelist Paul Coelho (The Witch of Portobello) in a newspaper near you this weekend, thanks to a piece by Angela Doland for the AP:

“My life is extremes, I am totally connected and totally disconnected, there are these moments of retreat, and that means to be really disconnected, with nothing, just silence,” he said, sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor in front of his couch....

Coelho, 59, came to novel-writing after many twists and turns. When he was 18, his parents put him in a psychiatric hospital for shock treatments. “I was not the typical good student who wants to follow his father’s career, so they thought I was crazy,” he said. He has forgiven them, saying they were only trying to help him.

You can read Doland’s interview with Coelho here. Coelho authors a dynamic and deeply interesting blog. You can catch up with it here.