The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, The international bestseller. The Alchemist is about a shepard who wants to travel the world, not just his home town in spain. He travels to the markets of tangiers and the to the Egyptian desert. His name is Santiago. Santisgo is an Andalusian shepard, Santiago only wanted to be a shepard to travel because the others dont have the money to travel so his father said no more and then he became a shepard. He meets a girl from Andalusia with flowing black hair, he went to school to learn and the girl was suprized,thats a shepard could read and write aswell as her, Santiago wants to go see the pyramids in Egypt and explor more of the world and not just his home town. Santiago loves to read and he learns more vocabulary in books than in school. Santiago loves anywhere that has a sea and has since he was little ‘the desert was once a sea’, ‘the sea has lived on in this shell,because thats its destiny’.