Veronika Decides to Die is a novel by Paulo Coelho. It tells the story of 24-year-old Veronika, who appears to have everything in life going for her, but who decides to kill herself. This book is partly based on Coelho's experience in various mental institutions . It is based around the subject of madness. The gist of the message is that "collective madness is called sanity". Veronika Decides to Die has been adapted for theatre a number of times, and was also used in other artistic references. Veronika is a beautiful young woman from Ljubljana, Slovenia who appears to have the perfect life,... but nevertheless decides to commit suicide by ingesting too many sleeping pills. While she waits to die, she decides to read a magazine. After seeing an article in the magazine which wittily asks "Where is Slovenia?," she decides to write a letter to the press justifying her suicide, the idea being to make the press believe that she has killed herself because people don't even know where Slovenia is.
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