Paulo Coelho.

Brazilian novelist, lyricist, and nonfiction writer.. Paulo Coelho, a lyricist and novelist, was born on August 24, 1947, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His middle-class parents, who wanted their son to become an engineer, educated him in Jesuit schools. They became troubled by his adolescent rebelliousness and his literary aspirations, however, and they sent him to a mental institution, where he received electroconvulsive therapy. Coelho attended law school in Rio de Janeiro but did not finish. Instead, he left school in 1970 and traveled extensively throughout Latin America, Europe, and North Africa.