From South America to Holland to Nepal—a new journey in the company of Paulo Coelho, bestselling author of The Alchemist. Drawing on the rich experience of his own life, bestselling author Paulo Coelho takes us back in time to relive the dreams of a generation that longed for peace. In Hippie, he tells the story of Paulo, a young, skinny Brazilian man with a goatee and long, flowing hair, who … goatee and long, flowing hair, who dreams of becoming a writer, and Karla, a Dutch woman in her twenties who has been waiting to find a companion to accompany her on the fabled hippie trail to Nepal.
After meeting each other in Amsterdam, she convinces Paulo to join her on a trip aboard the Magic Bus that travels from Amsterdam to Istanbul and across Central Asia to Kathmandu. As they embark on this journey together, Paulo and Karla explore a love affair that awakens them on every level and leads to choices and decisions that will set the course for their lives thereafter.
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I love Paulo Coelho’s lyrical narrative style. He paints such evocative pictures and has such a marvelous fluency with language. I was intrigued by this title and the opportunity to learn more directly about his life, but found the format of this one to be a little too free-flowingly 1970s for my taste…
I was born in 1973 so didn’t directly experience the ups and downs and conflicts that shaped the formation of relationships (to others, to the state, to nature, to life and experience) in the hippie era. Perhaps that is where I struggled with this one. Nontraditional narrative styles (be they free-form or stream of consciousness or atypically structured) don’t tend to resonate for me – I tend to prefer my fiction to be a little more linear.
The gorgeous lush language that I associate with Coelho’s style felt lost in the format in this one and I had a hard time falling into it the way I normally do with one of his stories. I have had this happen with a few of his more recent works; I seem to prefer the style of the earlier tales. Still, nobody tells a story quite like Coelho… So while it was not my favorite of his, if you are a fan of a freer format that flows with the times (literally), I suspect that this will be a title for you…
Thank you to Penguin’s First to Read program for my review copy.
This book is based on Coelho’s experiences as a young hippie in 1970. It begins as Karla meets Paulo in Amsterdam and persuades him to accompany her on the “Magic Bus” to Nepal. The story vacillates between several points of view in the group traveling on the bus but as soon as I became invested in a character’s story, it switched to someone else seeming never to complete each story. Still, I found it interesting and an enjoyable read. Free love, drugs, freedom, searching for meaning, and being judged for being non-conventional in appearance and life choices immerses the reader in a blissful, innocent, and fleeting moment in time. Where have all the hippies gone? We sure could use some love and peace, generosity and acceptance.
A great read about traveling in a different time. A great read for anyone looking for an armchair adventure back to a simpler time and an interesting place. Paulo lived an interesting life which makes for great reading.
It was not interesting tome and I loved her other books
This is a good read if you want to know more about the author.
As a Cohelo fan this one is a “meh” for me. Too predictable even for me, a romanticizer of this era. It’s true of the time, just failed to be quiet compelling enough.
Not as good as his earlier ones