Mari, a wife, mother, and successful lawyer, was treated for intense panic attacks.

While at the institution she meets a number of patients with varied experiences with “madness.” She questions the nature of insanity as she gets to know them. Her actions are uninhibited by other’s opinions and expectations. Though initially disappointed by her unsuccessful suicide, as the days continue she finds herself experiencing life more fully than ever before, as she has nothing to do lose. Her doctor, Igor, tells her that she has damaged her heart so much that she only has a few days to live, which she is expected to live out in the institution. Her suicide attempt fails, however, and she awakens in an infamous mental institution called Villete. She feels powerless to change her life and feels that things will only get worse as she ages, so makes a relatively passionless decision to end her life in order to find “freedom.” As she waits for the pills to take hold, she reads an article asking, “Where is Slovenia?” (in a meta stroke, the article is stated as being written by Coelho) and decides to write a letter to the editor, justifying her suicide as a reaction to the article’s belittlement of her home country. Though she has a job, friends and family, she feels nothing but apathy toward her life and feels no great draw toward the kind of life that is expected of her. Veronika is a young librarian with a good life that she nonetheless finds unfulfilling. The novel takes place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, a few years after the break up of Yugoslavia. It follows the story of a 24-year-old woman’s attempted suicide and stay at a mental hospital. Veronika Decides to Die is a 1998 novel by Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho.

Veronika decides to die meaning