Paulo Coelho, one of the world's best loved storytellers, is back with a riveting new novel set in London. This is the story of Athena, or Sherine, to give her the name she was baptised with. Her life is pieced together through a series of recorded interviews with those people who knew her well or hardly at all -- parents, colleagues, teachers, friends, acquaintances, her ex-husband. The novel unravels Athena's mysterious beginnings, via an orphanage in Romania, to a childhood in Beirut. When war breaks out, her adoptive family move with her to London, where a dramatic turn of events occurs! Athena, who has been dubbed 'the Witch of Portobello' for her seeming powers of prophecy, disappears dramatically, leaving those who knew her to solve the mystery of her life and abrupt departure. This gripping new novel is filled with the themes Paulo fans know and love: spirituality, relationships, destiny, freedom.

The novel is published in hardback on April 16th 2007. However, in an unprecedented twist on the traditional serialisation of popular novels by Charles Dickens et al, which enabled all people to have access to literature, Paulo Coelho has decided to publish the first seven chapters of The Witch of Portobello on his blog.

You can also read an extract on this page.