Veronika decides to die

In this novel, Paulo Coelho asks fundamental questions that millions of people repeat daily:

"What am I doing with this life? Why do I continue to live? "

Veronica is a twenty-four-year-old girl who has everything she could want: boyhood and beauty, handsome lovers, a comfortable job, and a loving family.However, there is a deep void within it that cannot be filled. So she decided to commit suicide on November 11, 1997, and took sleeping pills, expecting to never wake up. Veronica is shocked when she opens her eyes in a mental hospital, where they inform her that she survived the fatal dose, but her heart was fatally damaged. She will only live a few days.

After this incident, the novel goes deeper into describing the life Veronica lived, which she believes will be her last days in life. Veronica discovers herself, experiencing feelings that she would never allow herself to have: resentment, fear, curiosity, love, desire. She also discovers that every moment of her existence is a choice between life and death, until she becomes, in her last moments, more attractive to life than ever before.

In this novel, Paulo Coelho leads us on a journey in search of what it means to be a culture whose light obscures the shadows of anxiety and debilitating routine.

While he questions the meaning of madness, we see him glorifying the individual who is narrowed down by what society considers normal patterns. It is a poignant portrait of a young woman at the crossroads of despair and liberation; she is overwhelmed, with vivid poetry, with the sense that every other day is a renewed opportunity for life.