|
International bestselling author, Brazilian Paulo Coelho, has a new book ready to be released. But before A Bruxa de Portobello (The Witch of Portobello) hits bookstores on September 27 one quarter of the work will already be published online to be read for free.
The only catch is that you have to know Portuguese. Translations are not being made available mainly because they would depend on an agreement with the foreign translator and publisher. Chapter 7 of the new book was made available Saturday, August 19. Entltled "Lukás Jessen-Petersen, former-husband," chapter 7 starts with the following paragraph: "When Viorel was born I had just turned 22. I wasn't the student who had just married a former college colleague, but a man responsible for supporting his family, with an enormous pressure over my shoulders. My parents, obviously, who didn't even show up at the wedding, conditioned any financial help on the separation and on the grandson's guardianship (I should say my father commented that, because my mother used to call crying, telling me I was a lunatic, but that she would love to hold her grandchild in her arms). My hope was that, once they were able to understand my love for Athena and my decision to stay with her, this resistance would go away."
Coelho, who has already sold more than 75 million copies of his books in 62 languages all around the world, is giving away quite a big chunk of his latest book on his own website at www.paulocoelho.com. Nothing new there. The bestselling author has already made available online in the past, for downloading, several of his most popular books including the most famous of all: The Alchemist. The Alchemist alone has already sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. O Zahir, Coelho's latest book, released in 2005, wasn't a big hit in Brazil, but overseas, The Zahir, a Novel of Obssession, made big waves being the world's third bestselling book in 2005, losing only to the The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, both by Dan Brown. The Witch of Portobello is a take on the Catholic Church's abuses during the Inquisition. Coelho, who is a Catholic, brings the action, however, from the Dark Ages to the contemporary world. The book is an indictment against society's fear of changing and its resistance in the face of the new. In an interview with São Paulo daily Jornal da Tarde, Coelho revealed that the idea of publishing part of the book on the Internet before its publication in book form was from his assistant, Paula Bracconot: "She argued that if readers had access to the book beforehand, they would know what they were buying." In three weeks, the blog in which Brazil's most popular author is publishing the book's excerpts has already been visited by more than 11,000 people. Many of them are old-time readers who left all kinds of encouraging and thankful messages. Planeta, Coelho's publishing house in Brazil, seems happy with the author's decision to show his work online before publication. Pascoal Soto, the company's director, says he strongly backs the bestselling writer's initiative. "I think this is a way of capturing the reader's interest and reinforcing the differentiated manner Coelho deals with his public." The Brazilian writer has just signed a new contract with Planeta. His previous book, O Zahir, and O Alquimista were published in Brazil by Rocco, but other publishing houses like Globo and Vergara & Riba have also published his work. Even though it wasn't disclosed how much he received for the new agreement, it's rumored that he got a US$ 800,000 advancement for a four-year period.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.