“Hitler may have lost the war on the battlefield, but he ended up winning something too,” says Marek Halter, “because man in the twentieth century created the concentration camp and revived torture and taught his fellow men that it is possible to close their eyes to the misfortunes of others.”

Perhaps he is right: There are abandoned children, massacred civilians, innocent people imprisoned, lonely old people, drunks in the gutter, madmen in power.

But perhaps he isn’t right at all, for there are also Warriors of the Light.

And Warriors of the Light never accept what is unacceptable.

Excerpt from Warrior of the Light: A Manual by Paulo Coelho, Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, HarperOne, New York, USA, 2003, p. 70.

PAULO COELHO, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947, is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist, best known for his novel, The Alchemist (1988). His work has been published in more than 170 countries and translated into eighty languages. His books have had a life-enchanting impact on millions of people worldwide.