Veronika Decides to Die

Paulo Coelho was born in Brazil and has become one of the most widely read and loved authors in the world. Especially renowned for The Alchemist and Eleven Minutes, he has sold more than 100 million books worldwide and has been translated into 67 languages. The recipient of numerous prestigious international awards, amongst them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum and France's Legion d'Honneur, Paulo Coelho was inducted into the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 2002. 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, Jose Saramago, Bernardo Atxaga and Javier Marias. 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 Eca de Queiroz's masterpiece The Maias.