The Witch of Portobello
Encyclopedia
The Witch of Portobello is a fiction work by Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian writer Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist.-Biography:Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded with "My dear, your father is an engineer. He's a logical,...

 published in 2007, about a woman born in Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...

 to a Romani mother, who is orphaned and later adopted by a wealthy Lebanese
Lebanese people
The Lebanese people are a nation and ethnic group of Levantine people originating in what is today the country of Lebanon, including those who had inhabited Mount Lebanon prior to the creation of the modern Lebanese state....

 couple.

Style

It starts with the death of the main character, Athena, and is told from the points of view of the people who knew her – her adoptive mother, her ex-husband, a journalist researching vampires, a priest, her landlord, a teacher of calligraphy, a historian and an actress. They each provide a different view of her, describing not only what they saw and experienced but adding their own impressions, interpreting her through their own beliefs and fears.

Theme

In this book, Coelho works with the return to the goddess religion, the interpretation of love, and the feminine part of the Divine
Feminist theology
Feminist theology is a movement found in several religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and New Thought, to reconsider the traditions, practices, scriptures, and theologies of those religions from a feminist perspective...

 within the theme of searching for one’s true self and opening to the energies of the world.

The work also expounds a selection of philosophies, which bear a certain degree of similarity to Coelho's teachings from previous novels and carry the characteristic imprint of his own ideas, as well as a citation regarding the ephemeral nature of desires, which appears in another of Coelho's novels.

The writer elucidates the opinion that the Church has deviated by its stringent rules to the point where it no longer serves Jesus Christ, or as put in his words in one of the interviews: "It's a very long time since they've allowed me in there [the Church]".

Plot

As the book begins, Athena is dead. How she ended up that way creates the intrigue sustaining the book. The child, Sherine Khalil renames herself Athena
Athena
In Greek mythology, Athena, Athenê, or Athene , also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene , is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, warfare, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, justice, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is...

. As a child, she shows a strong religious vocation and reports seeing angel
Angel
Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...

s and saint
Saint
A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...

s, which both impresses and worries her parents.

She grows into a woman in search of answers to many questions that arise within a person. She has a contented life but her mind is not at ease. So she sets out to find answers to the classical question of "Who am I?" through many experiences. In her quest, she opens her heart to intoxicating powers and becomes a controversial spiritual leader in London.

The Blog

The experience of making available 1/3 of the book in a blog, in the words of Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist.-Biography:Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded with "My dear, your father is an engineer. He's a logical,...

, enabled his readers to judge by themselves the value of the book. This direct contact is, in his view, the best bet for literature.

Further reading

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