Paulo Coelho is the author of The Alchemist, he was born in 1947 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Being the author of 30 books that have sold over 320 million copies in 170 countries, he has become one of the most widely read authors in the world today. Paulo Coelho is the recipient of over 115 awards and honours, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Grinzane Cavour Book Award and the Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur, to name a few.

MARGARET JULL COSTA has been a translator of Spanish and Portuguese literature since 1987. Among the other authors she has translated are Paulo Coelho, Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago, Bernardo Atxaga and Javier Marías. Her work has brought her various awards, the most recent being the 2008 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Award and the 2008 Oxford Weidenfeld Prize for her translation of Eça de Queiroz's masterpiece The Maias.

A novel from internationally acclaimed author Paulo Coelho - a dramatic story of love, life and death that shows us all why every second of our existence is a choice we all make between living and dying.

A novel from internationally acclaimed author Paulo Coelho - a dramatic story of love, life and death that shows us all why every second of our existence is a choice we all make between living and dying.

Veronika has everything she could wish for. She is young and pretty, has plenty of boyfriends, a steady job, a loving family. Yet she is not happy; something is lacking in her life, and one morning she decides to die. She takes an overdose of sleeping pills, only to wake up some time later in the local hospital. There she is told that her heart is damaged and she has only a few days to live.

The story follows Veronika through these intense days as to her surprise she finds herself experiencing feelings she has never really felt before. Against all odds she finds herself falling in love and even wanting to live again...