Veronika Decides To Die is a compelling story about sanity, the psychological—but reading closely, it says much of our society, the concept of normality and perhaps more about the lessons of living life. A novel by Paulo Coelho, the story tells about the tale of a 24 year old woman, who looks contented with everything else in her life going so perfectly. However, she decides to kill herself. A book based on his own experiences inside the mental institution, Coelho gives us a glimpse of a lesson which to all maybe a elementary truth, but few acknowledge.

Her life seemed perfect and still she committed suicide, attempting to end it by taking in too many sleeping pills. Veronika lives in Slovenia which is one of the republics appointed by Yugoslavia. She lived a mundane life working in a library at night, and keeping herself entertained by dating men and at times sleeps with them. After the day, she retires to her room she rents at a convent. One night however, Veronika decides to end it all. Suffocated by the routines and monotony of her life, she attempts to free herself of it. The following day, after being resurrected from her momentary slumber, she finds herself in the confines of a mental hospital, Villete.

And in Villete, she comes to learn what people from the outside won't. At first she planned to never leave Villete alive for the thought of her going back to her humdrum life is good as being dead. She was granted however with her wish, when she discovers that she will be dead in a few weeks of heart failure due to her attempted suicide.

Not to her knowledge, is the experiment of the psychiatrist feigning her death by injecting a medicine to make her experience heart attacks hoping through the experiment can win a person to love living if one knows how she or he is about to die. In this process, Veronika turns around and starts to appreciate life, letting herself go to experience and make known to reality her desires.

Veronika in the course, comes to know of every patient in Villete, in her interaction with them finds new insights about life, about the world, and about the walls of the mental institution.

Villete is but the epitome of sanctuary cushioning individuals from the dangers of the outside world. For what is being questioned perhaps is the sanity of normality. When people are simply different from accustomed behavior or way of thinking, consensus stigmatizes you as insane. But what is sanity but a consensus of many. Villete served as a refuge against conformity, form, and monotony of everyday life impinged by society. Here, the villain is society; a society which constricted humanity into something less paying attention to form than content. The adventurer in our society is frowned upon. Inside the asylum, they are welcomed but living out is the only way to experience the truth about what life has to offer. And this is the philosophy which the novel tells us about.

Some would always raise a brow on people who attempt to take their own lives. People question their sanity, labeling them as mad, pitiable, hapless, and shallow. But then again, maybe people, like Veronika feels the limitations of the material world and the norms and mores impinged by society. In a world where the tangible has taken its course in the lives of people, the physical turns us cold and to some restless. Restlessness is the whimpering soul attempting to make meaning of this so called life. Inside the walls of the psychiatric wards, the knowledge of death has freed Veronika from the constraints of society; and in her death she has come to start living.