Veronika Decides to Die - Softcover

Coelho, Paulo

3.73

221,045 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060955775 ISBN 13: 9780060955779

Publisher: HarperOne, 2001

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Veronika is young and pretty and has everything she could wish for – yet one morning she takes an overdose of sleeping pills, only to wake up in the local hospital.

Veronika 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. The overdose of sleeping pills she takes does not work, and she wakes up in Villete, the local asylum. 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 she starts to question all her ideas about life. Soon she comes to realize that every second of existence is a choice we all make between living and dying. Against all odds she finds herself falling in love and even wanting to live again...

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Review:

"On 11 November 1997, Veronika decided that the moment to kill herself had--at last!--arrived": so begins Paulo Coelho's extraordinary new novel, Veronika Decides to Die. Renowned for the international success of The Alchemist, Coelho has secured his reputation as an outstanding storyteller and a key figure in world literature (his work has been translated into over 40 languages). Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, Veronika Decides to Die is a compelling story of a woman's struggle with and against life, told with Coelho's wit, subtlety and economy. On the track of whatever it is that makes life worth living, Coelho plots Veronika's fate with infinite care, weaving the mystery of her decision to take her own life into the themes of national identity--Veronika is a citizen of Slovenia, "that strange country that no one seemed quite able to place"--and madness.

Veronika does not die; instead, she wakes up in Villette--the "famous and much-feared lunatic asylum"--only to be told that, having damaged her heart irreparably, she has just a few days to live. What she faces now is a waiting game and the strange world of Villette: the rules and regulations which govern the lives of its inmates and the doctors who treat them. Coelho's question may be a familiar one: crudely, who, or what, is mad? But his fiction is a remarkable, sometimes chilling, response to it. "Everyone has an unusual story to tell" is the starting-point of the new treatment initiated at Villette by the enigmatic Dr Igor; it's also the insight from which this book takes off to explore the impact of a "slow, irreparable death" on a young woman and the mad men and women around her. --Vicky Lebeau

Review:

‘An exceptional writer.' USA TODAY

‘His books have had a life-enhancing impact on millions of people.’
THE TIMES

‘One of the few to deserve the term Publishing Phenomenon.’
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

‘Coelho’s writing is beautifully poetic but his message is what counts... he gives me hope and puts a smile on my face.’
DAILY EXPRESS

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