The Witch of Portobello
The Witch of Portobello بقلم Paulo Coelho ... This is the story of Athena, or Sherine, to give her the name she was baptised with. Her life is pieced together through a series of recorded interviews with those people who knew her well or hardly at all - parents, colleagues, teachers, friends, acquaintances, her ex-husband. The novel unravels Athena's mysterious beginnings, via an orphanage in Romania, to a childhood in Beirut. When war breaks out, her adoptive family move with her to London, where a dramatic turn of events occurs... Athena, who has been dubbed 'the Witch of Portobello' for her seeming powers of prophecy, disappears dramatically, leaving those who knew her to solve the mystery of her life and abrupt departure.
Author
![Paulo Coelho]()
Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 1947. He attended law school there but abandoned his studies in 1970 to travel throughout South America, as well as Europe and North Africa.
Two years later he returned to Brazil and began writing. Together with rock star Raul Seixas, he composed popular music lyrics that revolutionized Brazilian rock.
After a brief imprisonment in 1974 for alleged subversive activities against the Brazilian government, Coelho worked for five years for the recording departments of Polygram and CBS. Between 1981 and 1986 he studied with the order of RAM, an ancient, religious Spanish society. Now a literary phenomenon, he has sold over 175 million books worldwide and has been translated into 80 languages. He has received numerous international literary awards from a variety of countries and his books have become permanent fixtures on the international bestseller lists, including The Alchemist, which has spent 360 consecutive weeks on the NYT Trade Paperback chart.
He has been a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002, and in 2007 he was appointed United Nations Messenger of Peace.