Пауло Коэльо

Veronika Decides to Die


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       Also by Paulo Coelho

      The Alchemist

      The Pilgrimage

      The Valkyries

      By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

      The Fifth Mountain

      The Devil and Miss Prym

      Manual of the Warrior of Light

      Eleven Minutes

      The Zahir

      Like the Flowing River

      The Witch of Portobello

      Brida

      The Winner Stands Alone

      Aleph

      Manuscript Found in Accra

       Epigraph

      Behold I give unto you power to tread

       on serpents…and nothing shall by

       any means hurt you.

      Luke 10:19

       Dedication

      For S.T. de L, who began to help me without my realising it.

      Table of Contents

       Title Page

       10

       11

       12

       13

       14

       15

       16

       17

       18

       19

       20

       21

       22

       23

       24

       25

       26

       27

       28

       29

       Afterword

       Paulo Coelho Newsletter

       About the Author

       Did you love this book?

       More by Paulo

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

      On 11 November 1997, Veronika decided that the moment to kill herself had – at last! – arrived. She carefully cleaned the room that she rented in a convent, turned off the heating, brushed her teeth and lay down.

      She picked up the four packs of sleeping pills from her bedside table. Instead of crushing them and mixing them with water, she decided to take them one by one, because there is always a gap between intention and action, and she wanted to feel free to turn back half way. However, with each pill she swallowed, she felt more convinced: after five minutes the packs were empty.

      Since she didn’t know exactly how long it would take her to lose consciousness, she had placed on the bed that month’s issue of a French magazine, Homme, which had just arrived in the library where she worked. She had no particular interest in computer science, but, as she leafed through the magazine, she came across an article about a computer game (one of those CD-Roms), created by Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian writer she had happened to meet at a lecture in the café at the Grand Union Hotel. They had exchanged a few words and she had ended up being invited by his publisher to join them for supper. There were a lot of people there, though, and they hadn’t had a chance to talk in depth about anything.

      The fact that she had met the author, however, led her to think that he was part of her world, and that reading an article about his work could help pass the time. While she was waiting for death, Veronika started