Paulo Coelho "Veronika Decides To Die" (Dikra)

Paulo Coelho "Veronika Decides To Die"

What book are we talking about?

The book’s name is “Veronika Decides To Die”, it was written in 1998 by the famous Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho, he is also known for his

others famous best sellers “The Alchemist” or “11 minutes”. Paulo Coelho wrote many best sellers during his career, “Veronika decides to die”

was an international best seller too, it had so much success that it was traduced in 88 different languages and adapted into movies that had success too.

What is the book about?

The main character of this book is called Veronika, as mentioned in its title. Veronika is a young and pretty Slovak woman who lives a pretty calm life in the

city capital, Ljubljana around the 1980’s. But, as she lived in a convent, life wasn’t very pleasant there and she was tired of it. After much reflection,

Veronika decides to die; however, she didn’t want a “painful” death. She then took place on her bed in her room at the convent and took 4 boxes of sleeping pills

one by one.

She then wakes up to a very white light, she thought that she was in either heaven or hell, but in fact she woke up in an asylum. That's when suicide goes

wrong, someone saw her and took her to the hospital to save her life but at that time suicide was seen very badly by Slovak society, they thought Veronika was

completely crazy and put her there.

Later on, a doctor comes to her and we learn that the effect of the sleeping pills on her heart was so bad that she only has a few more weeks to live...

Veronika then decided she wanted to enjoy life before it’s too late and started to make friends at the asylum. She encounters a man and falls in love with him,

which is not very common to have a “love story” in an asylum. During the rest of the story we are going to follow the story of “love until the last breath”

I have chosen this book at first because the title surprised me. I really wanted to know “Who is Veronika and why would she decide to die?”. So thanks to the

author for choosing such a title which is very original, attractive and real.

I personally liked this book because we have the point of view of a young woman on the 1980’s Slovak society, so I could sort of identify to some of the

feelings she had. The fact that the author was also in an asylum makes the story way more realistic, to me you could really feel that he knew what he was talking

about while reading the book. I also really liked the fact that the author managed to make Veronika want to enjoy life before it’s too late even though at first she

wanted to end her life forever, it was really interesting seeing someone who was completely “done with life” try to enjoy every single second she had left to live

with someone she loved that much.

Reading the book I learned more about Brazilian and Slovak society at that time, it was really pleasant because we had two point of views and they were very

different but very interesting.

Honestly, I personally usually “struggle” to read books because the style of writing used by the author is way to complicated or the author uses difficult words

and it makes the story less enjoyable to me. But, this book was really easy to read, every detail used by the author to describe something or someone was very

useful to me.

In conclusion, I would recommend it to anyone, even if you don’t usually like to read books, just like me.